Reflections on your present levels of engagement and service.

I spent a good half an hour or so going through the survey handed out to us by Lane Perry who is looking at leadership and engagement in tertiary students and undertaking his PhD in Higher Education at Canterbury University, New Zealand. Looking back during high school I don't think I really did much in the way of any community type service as part of my schooling.  Whether my high school did not provide the opportunities at the time or perhaps I was busy being a teenager and doing my own thing (Probably a lot of hours on gaming consoles!). I have found now that I have gotten older, getting involved in things and helping or serving others has started to become a bigger part of my life. Up until a few months ago I was in a Board of Trustees position at the White Elephant Trust, an organisation some friends and myself set up about 4 years ago to provide youth focused events and activities (When we said "youth" we meant 15 -25 years). Making the decision to leave my place on the board was pretty hard as we had done a lot of great work and had made great friends not to mention had provided some amazing events and opportunities for youth people in Christchurch. My focus now is on continuing with my study at university and taking some time out to learn more about myself and what I want from life. Fortunately the paper I'm taking is all about that so I think I'm on the right track. If I also think of service in terms of providing help and spending time with other staff at work or friends to help them succeed I feel I have good levels and strengths I think area too.  While not part of my official "job" at RockStar Recipes I like to share what I have learnt from 10 years of technology and web development with anyone interested.  One staff member, Moses, I am helping him learn HTML and web design by providing him with resources/books etc and making an effort to follow up on his learning process every few days to make sure that he is on the right track, he's doing really well.  I also have several friends studying at Polytech that come to me for advice and resources around my area of expertise, again I'm always ready to help and provide resources to help my friends learn. So engagement and service is definatly a plus for me and is very rewarding.