Mixed Feelings and Parking Tickets

This time visiting headway, I felt much more comfortable and less anxious for my visit. I knew what to expect out of my which proved to be very comforting. Upon entering, I was greeted by the coordinator and another volunteer who was “assigned” to a specific patient as a care provider. My stay started with a causal talk around the pool table, with a few members playing pool. By the end of the pool session, there were 5 volunteers, one coordinator and approximatly six or seven members. The coordinator pointed out the ratio of voulinteers to members seemed excessive but they exclaimed,

“oh well, it makes my job easier”.

Having the mindset of a job made “easier”, due to a decreased load of responsibilities in the realm of social work seem like a backwards way of thinking. I agree that there was an excessive amount of volunteers on this specific day, but the comment seemed to rub me the wrong way. Later during my stay, one of the members made a comment about not having any volunteers to take her to the gym on that specific day. This got me thinking, maybe there was a more productive way to make the best of our time as volunteers. Leaving that day, I came to the conclusion that our time at headway was valuable to us as well as the members, but  redirecting our volunteer energies to more focused settings task based settings may be more helpful in the future.

I had another strange interaction with the coordinator that day which involved him telling the members the rocks would be put into the “garden”. I am not actually sure if this garden exists, but as the coordinator and myself were washing the rocks prepping them for painting they made a comment stating that I was being too meticulous with my rock cleaning. They exclaimed “It doesn’t fucking matter, the rocks aren’t actually going into a garden”. This comment made me feel uncomfortable because I felt as if the coordinator was being a bit “two faced”. In the coordinators defense, they were great while actually interacting with the members. I left headway and returned to my car with a nice $30 parking ticket… Shit.