Express Love in Deeds

Victor Ruiz Diaz

Dr. Ellis

EN 101

13 September 2013

Express Love in Deeds

                Service learning is a great opportunity to get to know you as a true individual. The Jesuit traditions about service learning establishes that solidarity is learned through contact rather than from concepts learned in a room with four walls that blocks you from the outside. Service opens doors to new experiences; it makes you accomplish things you never imagine doing, be part of something you thought you were not capable to accomplish. It opens doors to new relationships in which you learn many things and concepts that would guide your day to day life.

                In the short poem Mending Wall by Robert Frost, we see how a wall isolates two neighbors because each of them wants to be by their own. They kind of build up an alone relationship because the wall prevented the contact and communication that next door neighbors would have in a daily basis. Service learning does not want us to build up a wall that would eventually isolate us from the rest of the outside world; Kolvenbach emphasizes that in order to establish yourself as Jesuit you have to have an educated awareness of society and culture in the real world (34). By saying this we could make a sense that opening ourselves to new experiences, stepping out of our little boxes, we could explore a wider and diverse world that would eventually help us find our true personality.

                In our next piece of literature Accident, Mass. Ave. by Jill McDonough we could see how a day to day incident occurs. Both women involved in the so called accident started reacting like a normal Boston resident would react, yelling and shouting things to the other due to the anger and frustration of the moment. But after they realized that nothing relevant has occurred to their cars they noticed that the lack of self-control injured their feeling. Solidarity is learned through contact rather than through concepts, (Kolvenbach 34). In this sentence we can connected the story of the accident because the victims involucrate in the so call car crash fall in the concept of anger, but at the end by comforting each other with the hug they realized the psychological damage they done to each other, and that solidarity would help them move out of that emotional state.

                Curiosity is the feeling, is the little push we have to that lead us to discover new fields we never thought we would step foot on. That is the beauty of service learning, because it boost us with wonder about our outside world in where we learn many wonderful things that guides us to prosperity. On the final poetry reading Learning to Read by Frances E. W. Harper we could see how this curiosity guides a sixty year old women that wants to learn how to read. Even though people surrounding her constantly tell her that she is too old to begin reading she overcomes the obstacles provided by the others. Service learning teaches you to never give up, in fact it encourages you to accomplish anything you have in mind, and if you have faith that you could do it nothing would stop you from getting there.

                Service learning is one of the main supports of Jesuit education. Kolvenbach supports this argument saying, “As a university it is necessary to respect the established academic, professional and labor norms, but as Jesuit it is essential to go beyond them” (39). The quote empathizes the fact that we as students from a Jesuit school should go beyond the frontiers of our university and explore the world that is after it. Service learning is the path that would guide us there; it is the handle that would open hundreds of doors to new adventures through our lives.