Mike Lyons

Living and learning. We all come to college to do exactly those, to live and to learn. Everyone does them differently, and there aren’t any wrong ways to do them. But when you have the option to choose the ways in which you’ll live and learn, everyone ought to choose what’s right for them, just like I did. I chose SERVE because it’s right for me.

SERVE is a service community dedicated to living out Ut Prosim in different realms. This encompasses places directly connected to the student: your roommate, your hallway, anywhere on and around campus, and even back home. I have always lived a life of service in my social spheres by being polite, caring, and respectful to anyone that I have met and will meet. It’s easy to say it’s an inherent part of me, which inspired me to join the incredible organization of Key Club International, the high school branch of the Kiwanis International family.

Kiwanis is a service organization dedicated to making things happen in the community as a group. At first, when I joined Key Club, it was because I knew doing community service was a good thing to do; I did not anticipate how much I would learn as a member of the organization. The more you hear about the passions of others involved in community service, the more you realize how meaningful those experiences are, to you, your peers, and to those assisted. You learn that it’s more than doing the right thing; it’s improving the lives of others while feeling great about yourself for doing so.

For being such an active member in the club, my Key Club’s President invited me to go to the 2016 New Jersey Key Club District Convention, more commonly known as DCon. I did not really know what to expect when attending because I hadn’t ever been; before attending, there was no itinerary or schedule sent out. As a person who doesn’t like dancing or socializing with large groups of people, I was really fearful that I wouldn’t have any fun. Then time flew by and I eventually got there. I saw how nice the hotel was, how open the schedule was, and how dedicated everyone was. I had hope.

Of course, there were still parts of the weekend that I would have changed, but the majority was life-changing. The general atmosphere of the entire building was so unbelievable. Everyone was so nice and friendly and passionate about service because you had to be if you were there. Hearing the presenters talk about the accomplishments of Key Club made me realize how powerful the organization was. As the largest organization in the world for high school students, Key Club made a lot more happen than I’d thought because I was only ever exposed to a single club at a small high school; there were thousands of people there at DCon, and it’s even crazier to think that such a small fraction of people in Key Club were present at DCon. It really overwhelms you, but in an incredibly special way.

A major part of the weekend was listening to many different presentations about Key Club. Although many of the presentations were honestly boring and repetitive, there was one presentation, one speaker more specifically, that truly changed me. He made me realize that everything you do, both for and not for Key Club, does make a difference. When we handed in money promised to fund a vaccine to save the lives of mothers and their children from maternal neonatal tetanus (MNT) as part of the Eliminate Project, I had no idea that all of Kiwanis and UNICEF could combine to raise $110,000,000 and eliminate MNT from 40 different countries. And believe it or not, they’re continuing to raise money and eliminate it from the remaining 19 countries affected. As small as the contributions I made, they combined with millions of others’ small contributions to make the world a healthier, happier place.

While DCon made a huge difference in my belief in the little things making a big difference, I wasn’t completely intent on becoming a much greater contributor; the security of knowing that the things I did were meaningful was satisfying enough. Sometime later, I found that source of impetus, at an event where I wasn’t expecting any.

I went with my girlfriend and her family to an event for her church. They were fundraising for the 9 programs at the church’s Jersey Shore Dream Center, which addresses unmet needs for those in need. The event consisted of learning all about the programs of theirs, dancing, and listening to a few speakers. Toward the end, the main speaker took the floor and permanently changed my perspective on service. Through talking about his constant desire to do more for his community, he left us with the outstanding message that you can always do more. This really spoke to me because I felt that I had always shown up to events because I was obliged to go to them; I, instead, now wanted to go out of my way to choose to go to events, even if they are suggested to me.

While the learning part of school is for study lounges and classrooms, I still had the living part to organize for myself, and I realized that community service and volunteer work are something I wanted to put a lot of focus on. I chose to join SERVE because I could go out of my way to participate at service events and to continue to uphold great values.

The purpose of Living-Learning Communities is to enhance the college experiences of students. While SERVE will continue to enhance my time here at Virginia Tech, it will also help me to do something even more important: with the security of knowing that small things make a difference and with the inspiration to do more, SERVE will help me to enhance the lives of others around me, from the classroom to the community. That is why I joined SERVE.