I was a member in the Rural Health Scholars when I heard about the opportunity to volunteer at local schools. I never had thought about working with school-aged students, but it fit in well with my schedule. The first school I volunteered at was Fiddler’s Elementary School. I was helping one particular student who struggled with reading and started to see him progress. As the weeks went on, I recall being excited to see this student improving and doing better in school. This student helped me decide I wanted to continue serving the students in the 4-H Afterschool Program.

I encountered few challenges during my project, but those few did make it difficult. It was hard for me to attend the meetings towards the end of the semester when finals were getting closer. I would often have to skip some days, then make up my days later in the week. Also the program continued to go on a few weeks after SUU was out of school. I often would travel back to Cedar City to spend the time with the students. Sometimes the program did not have enough mentors on hand, so I had to take multiple students at times. Even though the struggles did make it difficult at times, but I was able to complete the project despite them.

The students in the program definitely benefited from the after-school meetings. The mentors were able to see the improvement in skills and grades as the program moved closer to the end of the year. Some of the students were not socially accepted in their classes or other groups, but they always had a friend at 4-H. Often the students would discuss with their mentors what was troubling them in school. I feel like just being there for these students made a huge difference, since they were able to turn to something positive during their hard times.

Going into this project, I did not see where I was going to benefit from it. I was able to relearn how to associate and talk school-aged children. In addition, I was able to practice some of the math concepts I had not practiced in years. However, these are just minor things I gained from the program. I was able to discover what I wanted to do the rest of my career. Being a positive influence for these students and knowing I could be impact the rest of their lives changed my prospective. I realized I wanted to go out into some career where I would be able to influence children for the better. I discovered I wanted to provide medical care to pediatric patients.

I truly enjoyed this project and gained appreciation for the experiences I had. It makes me thankful to know a little experience like this impacted the rest of my life. On the other hand, I was possibly able to influence the students as well. I gained empathy, social skills, and compassion from this project and would highly recommend it to any SUU student.