ark Plaza cost ten dollars for thirty minutes of use, and I didn’t want to haul my laptop to Northeastern, and thus wasn’t able to live-blog or provide daily updates, so I will consolidate some of my thoughts in this post. But, before I do that, I must say, I loved Boston. Growing up in Philadelphia taught me about city life and though I’ve spent time in Chicago, New York, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, D.C., and large cities abroad, I found Boston to be refreshing, clean, and pleasant. I was able to catch up with a few old friends who go to Harvard and Boston College, and able to see Cambridge, downtown, the Charles River, and Back Bay. I enjoyed taking the T everywhere and one of my favorite parts of being in any city is stumbling upon unexpected things, which happened more than a few times on this trip (I got to meet Tom Hanks on the street, and took part in a dance party put on by a group from New York City in a Red Line T car as we rode over the Charles River at night). I found the city's people incredibly friendly, and I hope to return here someday.Every once in awhile, I’ll meet someone who has a positive impact on me, whether he or she knows it or not. I often write about these people in my ‘other’ blog -- “Life in the Fast Lane” -- and they include people like my peer mentor, Miami’s former Associate Vice President of Student Affairs, and occasionally a professor. After Chase and I facilitated our Scholar-Leader: A Student-Directed Community workshop, which went fabulously, Stephanie gave me recommendations for which workshop I should attend. I ended up deciding to attend “Building a Movement: Ready, Go, Get Set,” facilitated by Wayne Meisel, president of the Bonner Foundation. Though it seems very similar to Miami’s Wilks Leadership Institute, I had never heard of the Bonner Foundation until this weekend, but was left with an incredibly positive impression of both the student Bonner Leaders and of the people at the top of the organization, a few of whom were at the conference. At his workshop,
Wayne Meisel talked about making community service a team sport, and about how it’s important for idealistic students to put the community back in community service. In an energizing session in which Wayne made us all stand up, workshop attendees repeated after him: “We are the leaders of tomorrow!” (“we are the leaders of tomorrow!”), “if we wait!” (“if we wait!”), “we won’t wait!” (“we won’t wait!”), “we won’t wait!” (“we won’t wait!”). In the seminar, Wayne had students list reasons why it’s difficult to get other students involved; then, as a group, we discussed strategies that addressed these difficulties. I learned so much from what everyone had to say – from how students pair residence hall corridors with different communities – neighborhoods, YMCAs, schools, etc. to how students get others engaged -- and I have adopted one of Wayne’s catch phrases as my own: “everybody, everyday.” This has been my vision as an Office of Community Engagement Student Service Guide and Honors Program Community Service Associate – to get as many people involved with meaningful, mutually-beneficial service projects every day. Like Wayne said, community service is a team sport. It was incredible to meet a pioneer in the service-learning field and having the chance to attend his workshop and talk to him made the conference go from 100% awesome to 110% awesome.Another event that was meaningful for me was the hunger banquet on Friday night. I learned that countries with the smallest carbon footprint suffer the most from developed countries’ 
overuse of fossil fuels, and that global warming harms crops. I hope to bring OxFam America to Oxford – not only for a hunger banquet, but also because it seems they might be able to help with a microlending program a peer in our PLEAS – Peer Leaders for Engagement and Service – Program, which I co-founded, is developing. Also, a Vista volunteer’s story was really emotional: she commented that the school’s Adopt-a-School equivalent has parents who cannot afford to pay the fifteen dollars to keep their children in the program, but her school pours millions of dollars into the athletic program. Finally, I hope to incorporate a Midnight Run, which a student shared with the group, into the Urban Plunges I’m planning – this involves students making bagged lunches for the homeless and delivering them to urban areas in the middle of the night.
Overall, I thought this year’s IMPACT conference went well; I got a lot out of it. It was a weekend of fiery idealism, a demonstration of the convictions of students across the country, a good time for networking and socializing with other student leaders, and a good space for me to learn, rejuvenate, reflect on my experiences, and plan for my future at Miami University and beyond. Also, I like to end some of my blog posts with some inspiration. At various points throughout the conference, the song "World" by the band Five for Fighting came to mind. While I don't know how to get the video to play on this blog, here's a link to it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-kpR32B-Uk&feature=related.
John
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