I volunteer once a week (or try to anyway) at the Neighborhood Thrift Store, run by People And Christ Together (PACT) Ministries in Mankato. There are quite a few regulars who are working every week, but it seems like every Saturday there is a new face when I arrive. When meeting a new person who is working at the store, the obvious first question is why he or she is there.

Most of people are retired senior citizens, sometimes married couples, who spend much of their time volunteering in various places throughout the community in their absence of a need to work for money. The rest are high school or college age. Some people, like me, are just there to volunteer when they can. A few people are getting paid, either through PACT Ministries or the Minnesota Valley Action Council. One girl who volunteered last year, a fellow Gustie, was getting internship/independent study credit. Sometimes there are college students who are “only with us for 10 to 20 hours,” as one older volunteer delicately put it; these students have court-ordered community service, typically doing their time for an under-age drinking violation.

So when I met this new volunteer on Saturday, the order of business was as follows: find out her name, find out if she is a college student like she appears to be and find out why she is here. I was not surprised by the fact that she is a student at MSU, but I was surprised by her reason for being there: she is required to complete 15 hours of community service a semester for her environmental science classes; she is going to try to complete 35 hours a semester, giving her a full class credit.

What a cool idea. I immediately wondered to myself why Gustavus doesn’t do this. It’s definitely a feasible amount of hours. Even with a full-time class schedule, two on-campus jobs, two extracurricular activities and an occasional Weekly commentary, I can find time to make it to the store for three or four hours every or every other Saturday afternoon. I would have the 15-hour-week requirement fulfilled in around 5 weeks.

Not only would it be possible to do, I think it would be greatly beneficial to everyone involved. Looking back, I think my time with the thrift store has been one of the best growing experiences I have had here at Gustavus. Finding a place to volunteer wasn’t hard at all. I filled out a very short form on the Second Harvest Heartland website on a whim one day, and before I knew it I had received e-mails from three or four organizations looking for volunteers in the area. After a couple of phone calls, I was headed off to the thrift store to meet with the manager.

It wasn’t all that easy, however. I was definitely outside of my comfort zone at first, and I had to work up my courage the first few times to set out on my own to this place full of people I didn’t know, most of whom were a lot older than me. It was also hard to explain to my friends what I was doing. I was working hard every week, but wasn’t getting any direct benefit, not making any money or getting any class credit. This idea was hard for people to wrap their minds around at first; I even had one of my friends flat out tell me that he thought it was a huge waste of time.

But these turned out to be very minor difficulties compared to the benefits of working there. I quickly learned that my nerves about the people there were completely misguided. The community at the thrift store is welcoming. Every day that I arrive to volunteer I am greeted with smiles, and when I leave I am told that I am appreciated. I never realized how rare it had been for anyone to tell me directly that they appreciate me until I started hearing it once a week.

And, despite the misgivings of some of my friends, I have definitely greatly benefited from going to the thrift store. I have grown as a person from being exposed to those with different backgrounds and life experiences than mine. One of the major benefits has been spending time with people who are so much older than me. I obviously like spending most of my time with people my own age, but I also really enjoy experiencing the wisdom my fellow volunteers have cultivated through decades of living. And it doesn’t hurt to be reminded that there’s no reason to rush through life instead of enjoying it. With any luck, I still have a long life ahead of me and a lot of time to get new experiences, as they have done.

I also get great exposure to people from different socioeconomic backgrounds than mine. Two of the goals of the thrift store are to provide low cost goods to the public and to provide free food to the public when possible (day-old bread that was going to be thrown out by grocery stores, etc.). Let’s be honest: everyone loves cheap and free stuff, so the customers at the thrift store come from all walks of life. People who look like they have lots of money and people who look like they have very little; people who speak very little English; mothers and fathers with young children; elderly couples; people with developmental disabilities; high school and college students; people who are trying to blend in and those who try very hard to stand out; people of all races and ethnicities; we see just about anyone you can imagine who would be living in or near Mankato.

Sometimes at Gustavus it is easy to forget about how diverse the society around us really is, and the thrift store never lets me forget it. By interacting with people from all walks of life, I am learning to appreciate everything that I have and the academic opportunities that have been offered to me here. I am also learning that most of these people who I think of as being so different than me are really not that different after all; most of them, like me, just want to go about the daily business of living, and they usually seem to appreciate a smile or kind word along the way.

We use the word community a lot here at Gustavus. While I think many of us value that idea, our use of it sometimes makes it far too easy to hide away up on the hill and forget about the larger community. As it is, there are plenty of regularly meeting programs or one time opportunities through the Community Service Center, and lots of on-campus and Greek organizations offer chances to give back. I think these are great, but I still see them as ways to isolate ourselves up on the hill. Signing up for a service opportunity through the college is a lot different than going out and finding one on your own. I think we need to broaden our meaning of community to include those who aren’t 18 to 22 years old, who may choose not to or may not be able to pursue higher education, who might not be able to afford private college tuition—we need to be able to identify with more than just other Gusties. Gustavus needs to broaden its meaning of the word community to include more than just Gustavus, and I believe that mandatory off-campus community service would be a great first step.