The four Dominican charisms of prayer, study, service, and community, that I learned while attending Aquinas College, have greatly influenced my decision to be a part of the Dominican Volunteers USA. The charisms were a great guideline for living out my college life and I wanted that same principle to become a habit in my life after graduation.

It was Gandhi who said, “The best way to find yourself is in service to others.” Through out my experience at Aquinas College I was very blessed to have gone on many service-learning trips from building bunk beds on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota to tutoring inner-city students in Brooklyn New York. It was because of the exposure I had in my service learning trips that influenced my desire to do a year of service after college. I was able to serve others in many different settings. After college I was really looking for an experience of a “year long service-learning trip,” Dominican Volunteers USA fit that description perfectly.

Working as a Resident Assistant during my senior year inspired me to want to live in Community with others. However, living in intentional and intergenerational community is very different than Residence Life. The shared experiences are somewhat similar. There will be conflicts and people will disagree, but together you work together to solve them.

A good friend once told me after we graduate and go out into the “real world," instead of being a student in a classroom with lectures, textbooks, and exams, we will be “students of the world.” During my short time of being a Dominican Volunteer I have experienced that saying all too well. I have learned there is not a textbook answer to life. I have been able to apply the things I learned in the classroom to the “real world” in ways I never thought possible.