Jennie's Student Leadership Project
Reflections
See what Jennie, Katherine, and volunteers had to say about the garden installation!
Jennie's Reflection
Today was the big day I led a victory garden in Cary. It was a busy morning, but it was tons of fun. Everything went smoothly, and I think the garden turned out well. Katherine seemed really excited about it. I’m excited to go back in a few weeks and see how everything looks. It’ll be a nice end to what has been a great learning experience. The Student Leadership Initiative’s mission is to mentor students in learning soft-skills to increase job marketability. Throughout the entire process, I worked with Shamsa (who was a wonderful mentor!) to learn leadership, fundraising, and event coordinating skills. I enhanced my leadership skills today when I had to coordinate each group and make sure that each group was on task, and I learned event coordinating skills when I had to make sure that everyone was in the right place at the right time. Fundraising skills were the hardest thing for me to learn. I’m not big on social media, and using social media to fundraise is a skill that I had to learn.
Overall, I think the biggest lesson I learned throughout this whole experience was remembering that it is okay to ask people for help. I’m a little bit of a control freak and I have a hard time delegating tasks. The installation today forced me to delegate. I was more of a supervisor and walked around answering questions and problem-solving as opposed to actually doing the tasks. That was a new experience for me and forced me to ask for help from everyone, as I couldn’t do everything myself. It reminded me that sometimes it’s okay to ask for help and that I don’t always have to have total control of everything.
I have so many people to thank for today! I owe Shamsa Visone a huge thanks for her patience, guidance, and help putting everything together. Thank you to Katherine Loflin as well for opening her home to us and for being so helpful and patient throughout this entire process. I’m so glad we got to give you a Victory Garden! Thanks to my parents for providing so many of the vegetable transplants and for giving gardening advice. Y’all are the best! Shout out to Justin Vance for taking pictures - I can’t wait to see them all! Thanks to Dr. Patterson for lending us his tools and van and for sending the volunteer opportunity out to his classes. Lastly, thanks to all the volunteers - from NC State Campus Farmers’ Market, from Dr. Patterson’s classes, and from Haven House. You all did a great job and we couldn’t have done it without you! Also this project would not have come to fruition without donations from Esther Loflin, Kathy Davis, Leah Wagner, Janie Styers, and Francesco Visone. Every little bit helps. With your donations in addition to soil, we were able to buy a net to keep the deer, coyotes, rabbits, birds, and squirrels from eating Grace's vegetables. Hopefully the greenhouse will help the carrots form roots. I am grateful for this intense, but wonderful leadership experience. I look forward to graduating in May and using my soft skills in both my personal and professional life.
Katherine's Reflection
Q: Why do you want to participate in the Student Leadership Initiative?
I’m a big believer in young talent learning community leadership, professional communication and project management skills. Real life skills create ready leaders. So at one level I was very interested in helping to facilitate that for an NC State student — which I was one too back in the day.
But also on another level, one of the reasons I wanted such a large acreage for my yard in this part of town is so my daughter and I could have different offerings in our yard. However, the reality is that it can also be overwhelming to know what to do where—so I could really use some expert advice! It seemed to me to be the ideal symbiotic relationship.
Q: Have you grown food before?
I have grown tomatoes, lettuces and herbs with varying success. It was sometimes hard for me to see why one thrived where another failed. And the information you can get online can also be very overwhelming or not transferable. Similarly the help you get even at a good nursery can also be tricky because they haven’t really seen your yard. So I expect that a big part of the experience will be an education for me! So I can be more consistently successful and motivated to keep growing.
Q: How will growing your own food benefit your family?
Well, of course, I plan on making sure it's used on our table and in our cooking at home. But I also see some other ways to use the food. For example, when my daughter get home from school, she often likes some time on her own outside near where one of the places that are planned as a garden with Student Leadership Initiative’s help. She excitedly tells me that now when she goes to that spot she will have the additional comfort of having something beautiful and lively to look at — and perhaps have a quick snack! I also am an active volunteer in my daughter’s classroom. So we will look for ways for my daughter to share (and show off) the products of our garden to encourage other kids to do the same and for me to integrate our experiences into lessons for the class.
Q: Tell us about your book.
"Place Match: The City Doctor’s Guide to Finding Where You Belong” is really dating and marriage guide for finding your place. Today, people are prioritizing where they want to live and quality of life like never before. But how do you find the place that you belong? It’s a very important question because where you choose to live will affect every aspect of your life and can may the difference in you living your best life, or not. However, most people don't know how to find their right place, or the science behind the journey. The premise of the book is finding the right place is a lot like finding the right partner to share your life. So I apply a dating and marriage framework to the journey with place to make it more relatable and actionable for the reader. It’s available through my website: city-doctor.com (where Victory Garden folks can use promo CARY to get 20% off!), amazon (no promo), and is also available in all Wake County Public Libraries.
Q: How does home gardening fit into #placematch?
Gardening represents one way we with bond with our place. It creates an important cocktail for finding belonging in a place: an opportunity to interact with the environment, in physical setting that is (or will be) attractive, and can be equally accessible and scalable to all needs and experience. There is no doubt that finding your #placematch starts at home. Making that garden/yard a place you feel you belong.
From there, people seek the same belonging to the larger city. And when the bond or even love you have at home match the feelings you have in the larger place, a #placematch is born. The science is clear that the resulting feelings of #placematch, which are belonging, love, and attachment, allow humans to thrive, be their best selves in that environment, and give back to the place that gives them those feelings in big and little ways. A most critical and worthy goal of our life experience.
Volunteer Reflection - Kaitlin Owens
My volunteer experience with Student Leadership Initiative was eye-opening. I have no idea the amount of work that you would put into something that seems so simple as a house garden. It was really neat to hear about the reasoning why we were doing something; we put down the black fabric first to protect the roots from the freshly cut mulch being one example. Also we had to use a mini greenhouse to protect the baby carrots. This was quite an adventure for me because I am not at all the gardening expert, and I came in knowing absolutely nothing. While I definitely am not a professional now, I did learn a lot that I would take into consideration if ever planting my own garden. I would recommend this to anyone; even those without prior experience.
Volunteer Reflection - Brian Kuttler
Instead of sleeping in this Saturday morning, I ended up volunteering with the Student Leadership Initiative and built a garden for a willing local. The resident, Dr. Katherine Loflin, was ecstatic that we helped her out with the creation of her garden. Katherine said that she was looking forward to having some fresh vegetables in the future for some scrumptious dinners. Gardens are much more than just a food source though, they also provide a great number of services to you and your community – they improve the aesthetics of your household, help reduce runoff water, and provide nutrients for the surrounding soil.
Luckily, we did not have to build this garden all by ourselves; we had help from an organization that helps guide at risk youth to a more safer lifestyle. Working with these young adults helped bring a larger perspective into the picture. Volunteering is not just about the task at hand, it is about the people’s lives that you have touched. I became pals with my partner Glenn, and we have plans for him to visit me at NC State. I hope to show him what the Wolfpack is all about and the benefits of a post high school education.