Service Learning Experience Reflection

 Carly Gonia

Service Learning Project

On September 24^th I, and 9 other classmates were able to help out with the building of a family’s home. The home when we had arrived was already structured. It consisted of a garage, kitchen, small living and dining area, laundry room, 2 bedrooms, a bathroom and then the master bedroom and master bathroom. The first part that we participated in was to install insulation in all of the walls. Some were able to fit just straight into the walls but others needed to be cut down. There would be times where we had to resize things more than once. Luckily we all had gloves so we weren’t itching there but after a while my arms started to itch a little. It took about 2 and half hours for the entire house to be filled with insulation. The next step was to secure the floors with more sturdiness by power drilling more drills into the floors so that they were fully pressed down. As you were power drilling you could see a big difference before and after because the floor was sticking up quite a bit more than if you had powered drilled.  I would switch off power drilling and vacuuming the floor. I had a great experience being able to not only help out a family but learn a lot about the process work of building a home. It was especially interesting to learning these types of things in class, such as the light frame construction, and then being able to see it in person.  Another thing was power drilling the nails to make sure that the floor was level and there were no tripping hazards.  My sorority actually is now teamed up with Habitat for humanity and we have to do all of our community service hours through their options. So with knowing that I’m almost positive that I will get the chance to help build more homes.