Alumni - Saint Andrew's School Archive - St. Andrew's School

Why am I Volunteering in a HospitalWhen I Could be Sleeping? BY SAM STEGEMAN '91Sunday at boarding school is the day of theweek which students value most. It istraditionally a day of rest, of recuperationafter a hectic and scheduled week. However,ten times a year, a group of seventeenstudents forfeit this luxury, arising at 8 a.m. totravel to the Christiana Medical Center nearWilmington for five hours of volunteer work.When I signed up with Mrs. van Buchem, ourfaculty advisor, in the fall, I saw volunteering inthe traditional sense-as a time to give services toothers and for an exposure to the world outside.My first mistake was to assume that the hospitalwould be like the real world; I soon realized that itwas even more isolated than a boarding school.While a trip to Philadelphia or Baltimore allows usto experience another cultural environment and toenjoy ourselves, volunteering forces us to copewith a large and organized institution, filled withpatients who are involuntary victims of disease,accidents, and circumstance. We are forced toadapt to the environment, and the personal growthwhich results from this adjustment has been just asimportant to me as growth toward health is to ahospital patient.Another mistake that I made was to head intothis experience with the assumption that the feelingof self-sacrifice would satisfy me. This wasnot an immediate result, however; what keeps megoing through a day at the hospital is an attractionto what the patients have to offer me. Through myconversations with them or assistance in simpletasks that they are unable to perform, I havelearned a lot about human strength and personalities.I am fortunate to have a job which takes mefrom section to section of the hospital, and as aresult I have acquired my own sense of the differingtones and states of mind which the patients ofeach ward have. As I visit every single room andcollect the menus from each patient, I encounter inone day, the full spectrum of mental and physicalstates-from the weak, despairing voice of a heartattack victim whose hands shake too much to beable to fill out a menu, to the innocent good-natureof a child too young to understand his or her ownsickness, to the giddy excitement of a new motherand father being discharged with their baby.As I make my rounds, I continually see othervolunteers from St. Andrew's performing variousduties, ranging from simple tasks assigned bynurses or playing with young children to fastpacedwork in the Emergency Room, each of themdriven by their own concems and free to arrive attheir own conclusions. My advice to anyone consideringvolunteering is to try it, because you arebound to extract your own meaning from what yougo through. Be prepared though, because some ofthe sights and experiences can be unsettling; itwill expose you to a type of environment whichdoes not exist anywhere else. 0The St. Andrew'sTrustees16From left to right,first row: Headmaster Jon 0'Brien. Stephanie Hurtt, Parents' Representative, Henry Herndon'48,President, Penelope Wike, Caroline duPont, Margaret Lawton '70 (Alumni Term Trustee), Katharine Gahagan, RandyBrinton '64, Tom Hooper '7/. Second row: Hick Rowland '58, Felix duPont (Chairman), Allen Morgan '6/, Andy Hamlin'7/, Gardner Cadwalader '66, Bob Blum, Fred Starr '5/ (Alumni Term Trustee), Charles Murphy '62 (Alumni TermTrustee). Third row: Bulent Atalay '58, Tyke Miller '47, Rt. Rev. Cabell Tennis (Bishop ofthe Episcopal Diocese ofDelaware), Win Schwab' 36, Bill Brownlee '44, Henry Silliman (Asst. Secty/Treasurer), Ray Genereaux. Missing are:Howard Snyder '6/ and Holly Whyte '35, (Trustee Emeritus).