I am so exhausted. I’ve just spent the past four days volunteering at the YMCA in my hometown for at least four hours a day. It was such a wonderful place, and I’m thinking of working there over the summer, but I never knew how tiring it could be!
I started work on Tuesday afternoon and the very first exciting task I was set to doing was coin counting. Now, I know what you may be thinking, such a glamourous job, how did you handle it? I have no idea. I zoned out or something because I was suddenly at the end of my pot of gold and in need of another task.
This is how it went for my four days of service, I would come in at 1 pm and Miss Mona, my supervisor, would be running around looking for any odd jobs I could do. The three main things I was doing was counting coins, scanning people in and sorting papers. I felt kind of useless when I was at the front desk scanning people in because I couldn’t do anything else; if someone came in with a question about memberships I would have to direct them to Cody, the person who works the front desk at 1pm, and he was always doing three things at once so I felt very useless. However, Miss Mona slipped me a job application for the summer so I can learn how to be of help and have a pretty entertaining job, because I would not be counting coins and searching for records.
This week was nothing like I had imagined it. I suppose I figured everywhere had an idea of what volunteer’s could do and always had things that needed to be done. YMCA North was nothing like that! The YMCA back at Purdue has it all set out, what they would need volunteers to do, and actually at YMCA Lafayette I am working with children in after school care, so this is different from what I expected again. Hopefully soon I can regain my energy I’ve depleted this week.
I have similar feeling when it comes to the positions and job responsiblities. It could be a boring job; it could be a job with limited things to do; could be you have things to do but you dont think you can handle it........
ReplyDeleteWell, it is pretty hard for people working in the volunteer position to find what they really like and want like what they did in a profit oriented corportation. In a company, people need to be in a suitable position in order to achieve the organizational goal.
But it doesn't mean job in non-profit organization are necessarily boring. There are many methods to make the position more fun or at least more satisftied.
There are basically three categories: job enhancement, job enlargement and job rotation.
It is about let you to do something you never done, do several more things and let you do something other people is doing and switch positions. These methods are developed from corportations, but it is also applicable to non-oragnizations.
That’s really cool that you’re thinking of working at a place you’ve been volunteering at. Even though you may feel like you didn’t accomplish a lot I’m sure that they were glad to have you there and helping out.
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean about thinking that all organizations have a set plan for what they need their volunteers to do. During my service this week I thought I would spend my hours working constantly, but after the initial morning work was done there wouldn’t be much else to do besides sit and wait for someone to come in and request help and usually there were at least four other people waiting to answer their questions. Either that or play with the animals at the shelter.
Another spring break volunteer! I chose to knock out a bunch of hours over my spring break as well. I know exactly what you mean about them finding odd jobs for volunteers to do. Although the place I volunteered seemed to be more organized, it can still get kinda hectic. That's great that you are thinking about working at a place you volunteered. It might be a good thing that you saw a different level or organization from places you volunteer.
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