Your favorite volunteering

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allantois

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Name the place (or as many as you want) where you truly enjoyed to volunteer.

It's ok to be honest and name none.

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Community based hospital. Everyone from the chief of surgery to the transportation techs were always willing to have a chat or teach me something new. Truly a wonderful place to be.
 
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Lab coordinator in a free clinic. Wonderful staff and a it's great to help treat and educate people.
 
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I am the book cart lady at a nursing home. I always really look forward to coming each week.
 
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Volunteer tutor for adults getting their GEDs (now called TASC). Have tutored some students all the way through, from not having finished 9th grade to getting their GED and finishing an associates degree. Truly awesome to see. It's probably my favorite volunteer activity because it forced me to see that I had very little to do with my own success.
 
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Non-clinical volunteering for me was lots of fun. It was with Chai Lifeline, a Jewish organization for chronically ill children. Back in the old days of applying, we needed to put hours per week on AMCASfor activities. This made it difficult to do these genuinely wonderful, but sporadic activities because schools like to see long commitments. With recent changes to the primary application, they are more attractive now which is good.

I piggy-backed this on top of your "typical" hospital volunteering. While a majority of it sucked, nothing beat the feeling of walking out the door to go home. Such an incredible euphoric feeling. :hungry:
 
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Boy Scout Scoutmaster. Getting kudos for mountain biking, skiing, backpacking, kayaking and rock climbing: teaching kids with great enthusiasm for the outdoors. Pure joy.
 
I think volunteering at a nonprofit thrift store for a charity is pretty cool. Just looking through all the interesting stuff that is donated and applying some handyman expertise to fix up furniture/electronics so that they can be sold. And It is nice to know that the money being raised is going towards good causes.
 
Health insurance exchange navigator. Enrollment period was crazy and getting involved with implementing a historic health care law (whether you like the law or not) at the ground level was exciting. Not to mention the service aspect to the local community as well.
 
Coaching youth sports. Until the kids get to be 13. Teenagers suck man. But its awesome.

Interviewers love to talk about it for what that is worth too.
 
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Children's hospital. I had 2 jobs.

One was running the waiting room preop...I got to play with kids who were nervous about their upcoming surgeries, and distract them. The parents could take a break and go fill out paperwork, or just be stressed without having to worry about destressing the kiddos. Plus, I watched siblings while the parents took the patients through the preop checks or into the OR.

The other was way more hands on: hearing screens on newborns. I would go in, print out the days census, cross check it with our records to see who had been screened already, and then go room to room with my equipment. I got to introduce myself to the moms, explain the test, play with <1d old babies for a bit, and then tell mom the results. Sometimes (often) I had to do it in my poor excuse for Spanish. Then I'd clean up and enter the results on the board so the nurses knew who was dischargeable (it's state law here that they cannot go home without a hearing screen). Super fun, super cute, super hands on, and good experience explaining things to patients' families.
 
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All of them, but most - Free Clinic scribe, nurse, egg tech
 
At this time, I volunteer teaching ESL to migrant workers in my area. It is so awesome because I get to work on my Spanish while also teaching English to these amazing people. It's kind of mutually beneficial volunteer work. I can't wait to get more hands on clinical volunteering when I start UG.
 
Working at an HIV/AIDS NGO in Uganda.

At the time I did it, it showed me how little I knew and how much I wanted to learn. Being powerless so as to do anything medicine related (I was doing outreach) really pushed me to want to do something where I could take on more of a direct care role and rekindled my interest in medicine.
 
Tutoring HS students is great, too. I appreciate it when they tell me I explained something so much better than their teacher did. :happy:
 
Volunteer income tax assistant. Doing other people's taxes is fun.
 
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Assistant instructor for wheelchair tennis clinics/practice (some of these people are insanely good)
 
Hospital runner for a women's crisis center. I get called at 2 AM to meet victims of rape or domestic violence at the ER, hold their hands during exams, listen to their stories, and generally be whatever they need me to be in that moment.
 
Being a mentor for pregnant and parenting teens. Loved working with the girls, even though it could be frustrating at times, and helping manage the group of mentors.
 
Camp counselor for kids with life-threatening/chronic diseases. Great to be a positive influence on them.
 
I taught swim lessons to kids :) It was really fun!
 
Working directly with clients at a food bank... so much better than working in back. :)
 
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