At College Possible, we have the opportunity to share “ripples” every Friday. Ripples are moments in our lives that illustrate the impact of College Possible. Much like the impact of a ripple in the water, these experiences spread far and wide. So far, during my term of service, I have shared two significant and similar ripples.
One ripple was about how I was contacted by a student in the Women and Gender Studies program, which I minored in at my alma mater, North Dakota State University (NDSU), to write an article for their newsletter. My name was passed along by one of my old professors, who knew the nature of my service, and I was asked to write about what I’m doing post-graduation.
The other ripple was about how another NDSU alumna, one of my fellow students, said she had a friend interested in helping nontraditional students. She knew I was involved in something similar and wanted to know if it would be okay for her to pass along my contact information to her friend so we could arrange a chat about this line of work.
These two ripples have some significant similarities. They both feature people from many states away who are not directly affected by College Possible but reached out to me because they wanted to know more about how I serve.
These ripples are significant because they show that people are interested in the work that College Possible does, and they want to know more about those who serve. These folks knew a little bit about my work from my Facebook posts about how much the work energizes me, and they took the time to reach out to learn more. I think this is a testament to the value of College Possible’s core mission and how we AmeriCorps members are carrying it out. Even people who are not directly involved in College Possible and don’t live in a community we directly serve are curious about how our work can help students from all walks of life.
I look forward to sharing more ripples as I continue to assist students from marginalized backgrounds on the path toward a bachelor’s degree. I hope the ripples I am making during my term of service will reach far behind the Omaha community to anyone interested in making a difference in the world.
This Great Story was written by Marisa Mathews, an AmeriCorps member for College Possible Omaha.
