By VANESSA LANGDON
Contributing Writer
My first reach out Saint Rose experience was layers of fun. And by layers I mean that my Lima two girls and I ventured the long bus ride to the Regional Food Bank Farm to spend our time picking onions. Lots and lots of onions.
The morning began with all of us sleepy girls congregating in our hall wondering what we had signed up for. Why were we up at 8 am on a Saturday again? Then we were reminded by the smiling faculty and organizers who helped us perk up with bagels and coffee. Served along with the goodies were inspirational stories of service that our fellow Strose community members experienced. And then I was ready to go and kick the farms butt.
My can do attitude was put to the test as my seatmate and I drowsily poked each other to stay awake and keep our resolve on the way to the farm. As you can imagine we had to drive a little outside of downtown Albany to get to the farm.
Once at the farm all 22 of us were instructed to pick onions. The task seemed manageable enough at first, but after about 15 minutes the smelly onions lost their allure. The multitude of bins that us girls collected was astounding, easily measuring in the fifties! Each bin that we collected averaged a weight of 120 pounds. The bins were generally the weight of many of the girls; it was a struggle to lug them to the road for the employees to heft into the truck.
In true Reach out Saint Rose fashion, well what appears to be true to me-a lowly freshman, the grueling back breaking work of picking the onions brought us all closer. This community service helped immensely to make the at times psychiatric hospital looking halls feel like a real family. The ordeal even fostered new friendships with foreign friends. Foreign meaning those who, brace yourself, live on the other side of the bathrooms-the bathrooms being the general line of demarcation for Lima floors. Only brave souls venture to the other side. From reminiscing about a simpler childhood while picking to Smash Mouth’s “All Star” or trying to remain calm and not throw an onion as far as we could while jamming to Mumford and Sons.
The sense of community was really an added bonus because even while we were all mumbling and grumbling about how we had dirt under of finger nails and the leaves kept breaking off the onions forcing us to dig them out I for one just tried to remember who we were doing it all for, the underprivileged in the area. They would love these onions, these dreadful smelly onions.
Freshmen Ally Bricker’s experience was a little muddled by her conditions. She was picking squash at the community garden. The garden is to a tool used to help get fresh produce into the hands of those experiencing economic hardships. The produce is sold at whole sale prices to help lower the cost of the fresh and healthy goods. Ally explained that while she would participate again in the future, “I wish we would have gotten a choice where we got to go. I did not want to be in the jungle with giant spiders. I would have rather been directly helping people at a soup kitchen or [working] with senior citizens.” Ally may not have enjoyed being outside in what she dubbed ‘the jungle’ battling off spider, bugs, and mice she did say the experience facilitated talking to those on her floor and roommate bonding, “we were all cheering each other on.”
Reach Out Saint Rose was back breaking and sweat inducing and sometimes creepy crawler filled work but besides karmic reward when returning to campus we were greeted with boxes of pizza. The amount of pizza provided along with the numerous smiling faces congratulating us on a job well done worked better than hot soapy water to clean all the stress and dirt away that we were covered in.
The only drawback that I saw in my experience was that while the bonding with floor mates was invaluable it would have been interesting to allow some mingling of the grades. As a freshman I feel like the only upperclassmen that I have actually talked to were resident assistants so bonding with the older and ‘wiser’ Strose community members would have beneficial. All in all Reach Out Saint Rose was an eye opening experience that as one resident assistant put it is “just one example of how Saint Rose truly does help give new perspectives to all its students.”
