This weekend I had the opportunity to participate in a service trip to help the victims of the Baton Rogue flood in August. I’ll admit, normally I’m against people going on little service trips that will ultimately lead to unnoticeable change, but this trip was certainly well organized and effective. As a middle class girl living on a hill in San Diego, picturing damage from a flood was unfeasible in my mind and I never realized truly how devastating its effects are until yesterday.

It never truly occurred to me that if you’re stuck in the flood, you lose virtually everything. At home we get a couple of inches a rain per year, down here in the south its basically a different world. The floods do inconceivable damage. As we stripped down this small single family home, I often came amongst small possessions that defined who they were. There were lots of princess accessories from the daughter, inexpensive jewelry from the mother, and bible guides spread amongst the nooks and crannies of the home. It was definitely a culture shock, seeing the little the family had in this lower class neighborhood completely gone.

I’d definitely recommend an experience like this to everyone, the group I was with did hard labor all day, argued about Kanye West, danced, and definitely bonded. The five AM wake up call inspired roughly a third of the people signed up for the trip not to go, and I too was a bit disappointed by the early wake up call, but it was totally worth it. I’d take tearing up floorboards and sledgehammering dry wall with some new friends any day over an endless Netflix marathon in my dorm. College isn’t just for class and partying, the funs where you least expect it. Doing service in a great opportunity for anyone and everyone, so get involved and live it up.