Service Learning Project Reflection

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Over the past two months, my group and I have been involved with Get FIT!, an educational fitness program that encourages individuals with physical and mental disabilities in the local community to live a healthier lifestyle. Throughout this service learning project, we have learned the importance of teamwork when planning, developing, and carrying out a plan for a specific individual as well as how to utilize valuable skills learned in the classroom in real-life scenarios. At the beginning of the semester, when we formed a service learning group, we were five strangers who needed to figure out how to work together to create a project plan and act upon it. The collaboration of new team member happens all the time in health care, so it is important …show more content…
It gave me an opportunity to use what I have learned in a real-life scenario. As a future healthcare professional, I hope to one day make a positive impact on my patients every day, specifically the disabled populations in which I will treat. The field of speech-language pathology, like Get FIT, works with vulnerable populations, and it is important to be a positive light in each patients’ lives. Overall, this project made me even more excited for my future, where I can help the disabled community for a living on a daily basis. By the end of the service learning project, which ended on April 17th, I valued my experience and was sad to say goodbye to some of the consistent participants. I seemed to gain some much more than I could have ever imagined, and it is an experience I will treasure forever. Although this opportunity was one of the highlights on my freshman year, it was not always easy. Some days, I lacked the motivation to attend the sessions, especially since they were at night after all my classes for the day were complete. Other days, the team’s communication was lacking. A project like this takes hard work and dedication – two characteristics that are essential for future healthcare professionals. Work within the medical field demands a tireless work ethic, while taking a lot of one with long hours or unsuccessful treatments. Mental toughness and the strength to get through a tough day are two traits that medical practitioners must acquire over time. Academically, working in a group also instigated difficulties. Finding a reliable leader, discussing problems as they arose, and contributing equal amounts of talking and listening were all factors that played a part the dynamic of the team. Since we all had very different schedules, we were stuck with meeting in the library both during the early hours of the morning or late