My First Year Trip

A lot of people look to their Spring Break as a time to take a step back from their academics (if there isn't too much homework assigned ...) and recover from near-the-end-of-the-year-burnout. As a Bonner First Year I spent the first 5 days of my Spring Break doing service in Cleveland (the First Year Trip goes to other cities, this year it just so happened to be in Cleveland). A quick breakdown, we worked at:

• Cuyahoga National Park, moving Winter equipment and cleaning.


• Waterloo Arts - A non-profit that supports local artists with gallery and studio spaces that we helped renovate.


• RID-ALL, an organization improving urban farming and agricultural education in Cleveland - we helped them with a variety of tasks.

 

In between cleaning, painting, and farming we stayed at the historic Stanford House our first night, then staying at the Cleveland Hostel - both of which were interesting experiences. There are, of course, a lot of details I'm leaving out of this post - but, then again, I'm not one for long posts - but to sum it all up, I had fun (see the piñata we found at Waterloo Arts) and learned a lot about Cleveland (I no longer see it like a not-as-big-as-LA city; one of the most inspiring things being the street art seen below). I had a great time and this has been just one of the great experiences being a Bonner has given me.

To the incoming students, because you're the ones who really read these, I'd encourage you to apply to be a Bonner Scholar for next year!

Thanks to Kayla, fellow first-year Bonner, for the pictures!