A wise man once said, “Act as if what you are doing matters. It does.” It took me a long time to figure out what he meant by this and it wasn’t until the summer of my sophomore year that I really understood.

I was volunteering at a hospital, taking flowers, cards, and gift to rooms, as well as showing visitors too rooms and taking patients where they needed to be around the hospital. I felt like my job was pretty inane and that the only good aspect to this was that it would look good for college. I made the most of the opportunity by talking to the patients trying to connect with them and make them feel appreciated.

After my summer of volunteering was over, my Grandfather cam to me and told me that on eof his friends was a patient I had worked with at the hospital. She had told him that in the ten minutes I had spent with her I had made her stay better and left a lasting impression on her. I was completely elated and touched when he told me this, and I had realized that what the author had made about all of our actions mattering was in fact true. My basic action of conversing with a patient had made a difference to this woman.

Now I realize that understanding this statement for a little over a year hardly makes me and expert on it, but this awareness admonishes me with a goal to do everything with the purpose of making it matter and to work to make a difference in peoples’ lives, even with the more basic of actions. This is a goal that I will bring to the campus of UW Lacrosse.