At the beginning of the semester, I was pretty excited about working with my community partner. I was looking forward to a new experience that was supposed to be fulfilling and enriching. When I chose the Boys and Girls club, I was apprehensive about working with children, because I have no experience with them -- but that was also precisely why I wanted to work there. I thought that it would be interesting to work in a situation that was completely new to me.
The truth is, I'm pretty disappointed by the whole experience. Getting started at the Boys and Girls club was a long and arduous process. Our contact was not actually from the branch of the club that we were going to work with, and so it seemed that she wasn't particularly anxious to get us started. This is very different from the reaction we got from the actual club staff, who were very happy for the extra help. However, even they were disorganized and not ready for us. They didn't know what tasks they needed help with, and they didn't even put us in touch with their tech guy (who is in charge of all the locations, so he isn't at the Tenderloin branch often) until a couple of weeks ago. So even when we tried to take charge, we found that some of our efforts setting up the computers were or are going to be overridden.
We didn't spend much time with the kids which, as it turns out, was fine with me. Perhaps I would have gotten more comfortable with them if I had worked with them more, but instead this experience only confirmed what I already knew: I don't like kids that much. As far as the computer stuff went, I didn't really learn anything there either. In fact, all I can really say I learned is to make sure that if I'm doing a job or volunteering for people, I should insist on getting in touch with the right people early on. That, I suppose, could be a valuable lesson.
