Analysis of Service Learning - Essay Example

Analysis of Service LearningService learning is a very important part of higher education, which is focused on working within an environment that can demonstrate a kind of cultural layer, different from the person’s one; moreover, serving social purposes in a community allows the person to integrate into the different culture and learn it from the inside within the scopes of sociocultural anthropology (Bringle and Hatcher 221). My learning objectives were engaged with integration into lifestyle diversities of the United States through working in the project called the Habitat for Humanity.

The Habitat for Humanity is a project provided by the non-profit store that creates additional funding to help people who need support in housing purposes. The project was conducted on April 28, 2015 from 1.00 PM to 6.00 pm at the Lynnwood branch and I was a member of the project’s staff. Hence, I helped to tag prices on the incoming items and cleaned the floor in the store. I worked with few people who were great supporters of the project and believed in its success and utility for the society in general and for Snohomish County in particular.

I’ve got a lot of experiences concerning trading and team work. First of all, I’ve realized that team work is a complicated kind communication that requires a lot of patience and ability to conform to other people who one works with. Also, dealing with customers, sometimes I had to be nice and appreciate the position of each and every of them, so basically I had to understand their needs and the conditions they lived in. Though I’ve managed to observe how various are people’s cultural backgrounds, lifestyles, customs, and traditions.

It was a great experience that will encourage my further learning of different cultures presented in the United States.The experience I’ve got is definitely closely related to anthropology as I dealt with various kinds of interpersonal communication and integration into multiple forms of American culture. For instance, working with people of various lifestyles and cultural backgrounds made me realize the factors that affect development of people’s personalities’ and such things as social adaptation, preferences, and even their styles of communication between each other.

Hence, exploring different items, both donated and purchased, has made me to take a look at people’s various lifestyles and cultures; I also learned how people’s home appliances are related to their social status or striving to get one. The experience concerning donation was especially interesting to me, because it exposed some features of human personality of the people who usually take part in the projects like the Habitat for Humanity; thus working in the project has helped me to see the core difference between the people who donate and those who buy such items; moreover, I had an opportunity to explore how people’s preferences in purchasing of products are related to their cultural backgrounds, lifestyles, and social classes.

The experience gained during this project has been absolutely interesting to me from the anthropological point of view, because, in general, I managed to retrieve a lot of interesting observations in terms of sociocultural anthropology and simultaneously had a great time working there. Works CitedBringle, Robert G. and Hatcher, Julie A. "Implementing Service Learning in Higher Education". The Journal of Higher Education. 67(1996): 221-239.