Mayo secondary help

[custard]

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I'm a little confused about two of Mayo's questions:

1) Describe one sustained service activity that you have engaged in. What needs were identified and how were these needs addressed in this service activity?

4) What innovative solution have you contributed to a problem or research question?


What does it mean by "what needs were identified and how were these needs addressed"? Does it mean talk about volunteering in a service activity and how the volunteering that you do addresses some needs in the community?

For no. 4, what does it mean by "solution"? It sounds like they want you to talk about an invention or something. Is it enough to talk about research that I'm doing or is that not what they are really looking for?

 

[Wylde]

1) How did your volunteering help with a community problem (ie you built houses for habitat for humanity, fed the hungry/poor, etc. etc.). Explain the problem (ie poor people needed food) and how your volunteer service helped with that problem (ie gave them a can of soup).

 

[djones473]

For #4, you could apply that to your research if for instance you thought of a new way to perform an experiment, and it helped you get better results... Or just, what did you find in your research? What did you contribute to the field?

 

[custard]

Well I'm still in the data-gathering part of my research, but I suppose I could talk about how my study could contribute to the field. I'm not sure if that will be what they are looking for though. Maybe I should answer question 1 and then the question "What do you do to maintain health and balance in your life?" That question seems so fluffy though. :S


How does this sound for no. 1: I volunteer as an advocate for survivors of sexual assault. So if someone goes to the ED or a support facility on campus after being raped, they page a volunteer and one of us goes to provide support/resources. So the problem was that people who were raped had little emotional support in the busy ED and often didn't have anyone to talk to. This advocacy program helps with this problem because a volunteer goes to the hospital to provide support and can provide further resources and referrals. Then maybe I could also mention that sometimes there are unfilled volunteer shifts so I accepted a back-up pager which is paged if an advocate is needed when no-one is formally on call. Whatcha think? I guess my orginal confusion was about the fact that I, myself, did not actually create this solution to this problem. I just volunteer within it.

 

[custard]

up up

 

[thoffen]

1) How did your volunteering help with a community problem (ie you built houses for habitat for humanity, fed the hungry/poor, etc. etc.). Explain the problem (ie poor people needed food) and how your volunteer service helped with that problem (ie gave them a can of soup).

I disagree. I think they are looking for a bit more than the obvious here. They are looking for the not-so-intuitive demands of the community problem and how they relate to you personally. For example, I am a Big Brothers Big Sisters volunteer. Ostensibly, this was straightforward and something I thought I would be good at. However, it required some skills that I had to coax out of my personality. I was put into the position of reaching out to someone who wasn't actively seeking my help, and I needed to be able to bridge out to someone else. Though I am good with people, I found difficulty in initiating a relationship. I found a way to fulfil that need, and we have been together as "Big and Little" for over a year now.

4) They just want you to illustrate that you are a creative and innovative problem solver. It isn't a research question specifically, although that is a common source of problems. It should, in my opinion, illustrate that you can solve an unanticipated problem in a creative way.

 

[custard]

Thanks. That does make sense.

Anyone else?

 

[custard]

I'm still pondering these questions.

I'm now considering answering this one: 3) Describe a situation when you had to engage and motivate others to achieve a goal. How did you do it?

Could someone please tell me if this idea would work well (or is it too weak?)

I'm currently working on an Honors thesis and in the past month I have been working with three other students (one younger, one is my age and one is older) and basically they are helping me with anything I tell them to do... So in this situation I have had to train and work above students that are around my age. I have had to figure out the best way to go about engaging and motivating them to work on my project (without it being weird that we're the same age). Ways in which that I've done this: being upfront that I'm not a grad student but that working with me means that they can be very involved in the project and know exactly what it is about and the purpose of the things they are doing, by being very approachable and friendly yet setting clear boundaries, by allowing them to work independently (not constantly working over them) yet checking in on them weekly to make sure everything is going smoothly etc etc