Now and then pending towards an idealistic view, my mind can sometimes interpret things very simplistically and underestimate some details, depending on the situation.
At the Stewart Park Playground construction site, I worked the entire afternoon with another Rose Scholar volunteer and a single worker. And we worked the entire afternoon on a roof.
Honestly, it sometimes felt like we weren’t doing progress. All the time, we needed to check if the parts of the structure were at the correct angle. All the time, we had to correct small differences in heights and positions. Because of that, if you compared the looks of the structure in the beginning and in the end of the day, you would probably see very little noticeable difference. And, whenever I see something like that, I start blaming myself for “not working as hard as I should’ve” (even if that doesn’t make any sense).
However, this process we went through made me start appreciating much more the amount of effort and care that goes into construction and, actually, most things. We were always making every detail was OK; always looking at the last small step taken with the single, clear goal of making sure the next one is easy and smooth. Although a part of my mind would love to disagree, I now appreciate a lot more the work we did than I would’ve before, and I do believe we did significant progress. We didn’t make big steps: we made big small steps.

Aside from that, and going to a more general overview, the visit to the park was, to me, one of the few experiences I’ve had outside of campus so far, and one that made me feel like a part of the community. It was very rewarding to help building the playground for the kids, even if we only did it for an afternoon and, thus, were only able to take a very small portion of the big small steps of the construction.