My Experience at Maple Fest at the Cranbrook Institute of Science
By C Linder
This past weekend I had the pleasure of volunteering my time with my fellow Quicken Loans/Rock Financial/Title Source team members at the Cranbrook Institute of Science in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. The event was the Maple Fest which was a two-day kids event put on by the center, and is run primarily by volunteers. Sometimes it is so easy to get caught up in the demands of everyday life and it feels great to volunteer your time to help others in need to bring you back down to earth. This is what I was seeking through this opportunity- and it also helped that I am a complete science nerd.
I was somewhat disappointed that it happened to be yet another freezing, windy, snowy day in Michigan because some of the kids were going to go outside to participate in activities- and I unfortunately was missing gloves and a hat. This prevented me from being able to volunteer outside, which was my original plan. I thought it was inspiring, however, that they still took groups of kids outside to learn about making maple syrup and tapping it from the trees.
I was still able to find plenty to do inside the science center, despite my frustrations with the weather being uncooperative for an outdoor opportunity. I found that the science center, which is mostly meant for kids, is undoubtedly well suited for adults, too! Sometimes you forget the simple things that you learned so long ago in elementary school, but are still interesting and fun nonetheless. I walked through the center to the area where I was volunteering for my first task, which was to fold programs for the following day’s Maple Fest. I was folding programs with two other volunteers, which was great because it turned out that I had worked briefly with one of them, and the other was his fiancé. Volunteering aside, it was nice to have conversations with people I probably otherwise wouldn’t get the chance to get to know. After folding programs, I moved on to cutting and arranging flowers for centerpieces.
Lunch, which was provided by Whole Foods (thank you Whole Foods!), was a nice small break for us. We were also able to mingle with the other volunteers during this time. Following this we moved some tables around and then I relieved two other volunteers that were watching the kids in an activity part of the Science Center where there were spinning tops flying everywhere!
That pretty much wrapped up my experience at Cranbrook Institute of Science. I left feeling great about volunteering my time, and was uplifted by the inquisitive kids and their curious and fun nature. Volunteering did the trick in bringing me back to my center. It made me realize that although life is full of demands and gets more fast-paced by the minute, a few hours helping others can remind me of other perspectives besides my own, and can aid in an important realization- life is not as serious as we make it out to be, and to truly enjoy the here and now.
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