This past week was much busier than normal, which was all due to our school radio station's annual fundraiser, Lifeline. Since my journalism involves radio, I was required to work for 8 hours between Wednesday, March 5th and Monday, March 10th. I ended up volunteering to work extra hours just because I enjoyed it. We also got to know the upperclassmen that work in the station better and it was just a really fun experience. Plus, there was free food...
One of the most interesting experiences I had during Lifeline was on Saturday. Myself, along with three of my friends volunteered to be part of Lifeline On The Road, where different teams of the radio staff went and did various community projects around Mount Vernon. Our group was sent to a local church, and my friends and I had been assigned to work concessions at 8:30 am until our whole group showed up at 10 am, which is when we were given a list of several things that needed to be done throughout the building. One of the items on the list simply read "finish mosaic". Reluctantly, I volunteered to do this job. As soon as I was shown the project I was supposed to finish, I immediately began to regret my decision. I stared, overwhelmed, at a huge wooden board with thousands and thousands of little boxes drawn on it. On the table next to the board was a little paper with a picture of a dove and a grid over it with thousands of boxes as well, only these boxes were numbered. One of my friends decided to help me and we got to work transferring the numbers on the paper to the corresponding boxes on the wall, constructing a huge paint-by-numbers. This process took almost two hours. After a short break for lunch, my other two friends joined us and the four of us began painting each square with the color that each number represented. But the thing about painting them, is that you have to leave a little bit of space left around the border of each square so the finished product looks like a bunch of mosaic tiles put together. Around 2 pm, the rest of our group had completed the other tasks on the list and had already left. My friends and I, on the other hand, were nowhere close to being done. Around 4, we sent a really sad video of us requesting Starbucks to all the people we knew were working in the station. About half an hour later, one of them showed up with our order. After our caffeine boost, we started working as quickly as we could to get the mosaic finished. Finally, around 6pm, we painted the last box and stepped back to admire our work. Instead of seeing a majestic dove soaring over clouds like we in the picture we were supposed to be imitating, our mosaic just looked like a large, multicolor blob. We fell to the ground in a heap of disappointment, anger, depression, and laughter. There were so many mixed emotions and we didn't really know how to react. A few minutes later, we took a couple more steps back and were relieved when we could actually see what was meant to be there. All in all, it was a very interesting day and ended up being a great bonding experience, as well as a memory we'll carry with us for a long time.
