perils of volunteering

When you find yourself with lots of free time, people often suggest that you volunteer your services somewhere: help out a worthy group; brush up on old skills, or learn new ones; boost your self-confidence; possibly make new friends. My 9 volunteering experiences have all been with worthy organizations. But often the old skills I brushed up on were things I didn’t like doing (filing, digitizing GIS data), and the new skills I learned (running a cash register, retail sales; tutoring in English) were so stressful I never want to do them again. So 3/9 experiences were at least somewhat enjoyable, but the remaining six were pretty awful, and damaged my self confidence; I’ve made friends in only 1 of 9 situations.

And yet, almost immediately after leaving one volunteer position, I feel a strong internal push toward finding another position.

This whole cycle began 30 years ago. I was in eighth grade, and my mother decided my hobbies of reading, daydreaming, and sketching were not going to impress anyone at the college prep high school I would be attending. So she signed me up for Literacy Volunteers of America — a few years of that were going to look great on my college applications! — and hey, I already loved to read, so naturally I’d be great at teaching reading to other people. I don’t remember if I was interested in the idea ahead of time, but it wouldn’t have mattered to my mother either way. I do remember going to orientation, and being the youngest person in the room by several decades.  I don’t remember anything resembling actual training in how to teach, and no one mentioned non-native speakers of English. That’s when I started to feel overwhelmed. My student was a child of East Indian descent, who was attending an elementary school not far from my junior high. I would walk to his house after my school day ended, tutor him for some period of time, then walk home. At first I enjoyed it, but mostly because of the intriguing smells of his mother’s Indian cooking, and the little boy’s excitement at seeing me. I’d never had someone look up to me before. I took the idea of being a role model very seriously, and I was hoping this would be my first foray into success with adult responsibilities.

Unfortunately, I was a terrible teacher. I was in way over my head, and had no idea how to help this boy with his issues. I gingerly talked my mother about my concerns, which she dismissed, saying I needed to “try harder”. Apparently that’s the magic that fixes everything, but it didn’t work for me.

After several weeks, maybe a month, I stopped going, but I didn’t tell anybody. On my scheduled days, I would take long walks, agonizing over what a bad person I was, and how I was letting everybody down, and then I would go home. On the rare occasions my mother asked how my tutoring was going, I’d tell her anecdotes about his progress from before. She didn’t notice any discrepancies.

Eventually I told my mother it wasn’t working, that I wanted to stop doing it. She let me, with great reluctance. She impressed upon me, as she had so often in the past, that once you commit to something, you can never change your mind, and you certainly cannot decide that maybe it was a bad fit all along. Only “losers” quit at anything, ever.

As creative people will recognize, you have to try lots of things before you find the ones that make your heart sing. I was disappointed to find that I have little musical ability, but I only know that because I tried guitar lessons, recorder lessons, singing in the choir, and singing both solos and chorus in school musicals. I do have a facility for learning foreign languages. I love yarn, but knitting and crocheting are both too stressful for my wrists, so I may have to devise my own new fiber art form.

I’m willing to try almost any activity if I think I’ll learn something interesting. Ten years ago, I volunteered at one of my favorite places, the Morton Arboretum, because I wanted to work in their herbarium; instead they had me doing filing for the accounting department. My parents thought I should stick with it, because it might “lead to” something.

I’m reminded of the explanation between instrumental reasons and fundamental reasons, in Daniel H. Pink’s manga, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need:

“You can do something for instrumental reasons– because you think it’s going to lead to something else, regardless of whether you enjoy it or it’s worthwhile… or you can do something for fundamental reasons– because you think it’s inherently valuable, regardless of what it may or may not lead to. The dirty little secret is that instrumental reasons usually don’t work. Things are too complicated, too unpredictable. You never know what’s going to happen. So you end up stuck. The most successful people– not all of the time, but most of the time– make decisions for fundamental reasons.

They take a job or join a company because it will let them do interesting work in a cool place– even if they don’t know exactly where it will lead.”

Reading this book showed me that I’ve had the right approach for jobs, but I haven’t used it often enough when looking for volunteering opportunities. When I followed my own curiosity — but not when I was trying to add things to my resume or refresh work skills that pay well but I don’t like doing — I found situations and people that were interesting, and that I enjoyed for their own sake.

The world is nonlinear; I’m no longer sure there’s any such thing as A “leads to” B.

I need to trust to my own curiosity, because that’s one thing I’ve always been able to count on.

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