San Juan Mountain Studies Institute
For my sophomore inspire week, I was in the San Juan Mountain Studies Institute group. For one of our work days, we went to a forest service bunkhouse and painted and floored the bedrooms. For the second workday, we made reflectors for the sage grouse so they can see where there are fences and don't run into them. We also helped move around some forest service signs. At the end of the day, we went and checked out the Cortez heritage center. The personal strengths I brought to the group were teamwork, leadership, and optimism. I used leadership on the first day when we were working on flooring a room at the bunkhouse. I was working with Lindsay and Milo flooring two bedrooms. None of us had floored a room before, so we had to use teamwork to figure it out. I also used leadership to lead the group. I have had experience working with tools before, so I was able to help out and show them how to use the tools. I used optimism when we were working on the bird reflectors the second day. Our group wasn't too excited about doing this task, but I had a good attitude and tried to make the job fun so others would enjoy it more. In the end, we all had a good day. During these days of community service, I learn how to use my skills in more of a job situation not just during school work. Something that surprised me about these jobs is that a lot of it is cool what they are doing, but they also have a lot of easier and tedious tasks that need to get done. I plan to engage in service to the community in the future by just really taking project or work that may come up. Although it may not be the most fun job, you can connect to your community, learn new things, and meet some cool people in the process.