For volunteering I find it very difficult to remain motivated. Sometimes I feel like there are more hoops to jump through for volunteering than there are for the pre-med process...
I've been through 3 undergraduate volunteering-based clubs, an HIV assistance hospice, an animal shelter, and a few positions at different divisions of a hospital.
The clubs were poorly organized and served no function beyond fundraising or desk work. In one particular instance, I was asked to attempt to sell squashed fluffernutter sandwiches for a dollar in a pathetic excuse for a bake sale - I made around fifteen dollars in four hours, after lowering the price to 50 cents and sitting in front of the cafeteria (hey, between dorm food and a mashed fluffernutter, i'd be willing to take my chances too). I bailed out pretty quickly.
The hospice stopped returning my calls and e-mails (musta scared em). The animal shelter was run by a bunch of people who thought it was more important to insult one another and argue for leadership rights than to actually raise funding and efficiency for the shelter. E-mails were sparse at first, with around 2 weeks between responses, then stopped altogether.
In the hospital, which I would say has, indeed, been my best volunteering experience, I spend most of my time on this very forum, wondering why they called me in at all - the ratio of patients to nurses is generally somewhere on the order of 3 to 1...
I've started looking at other hospitals, but I'm starting my application process soon, and to be honest, I'm genuinely reluctant to bother continue looking for 'great volunteering experiences'. Maybe I've just had some bad luck, but is it any real wonder why people don't volunteer out of the goodness of their hearts, when volunteering often requires a whole lot of effort to simply find something worth committing to at all?
But it makes me wonder if the people that evaluate the application believe that all the aplicants do it out of the goodness of their hearts...oh well...lol
