NCCC Atlantic Region 2010 CLASS 16 “I’VE LEARNED”

• That it’s not about your age, it’s about your “A”

• How to hold your pee while waiting to use the 1 bathroom for 11 people

• It works better to complete a job imperfectly then to not complete it at all

• That you meet some interesting people at 3 AM in the Philadelphia train station. For instance…evidently the ice age is coming.

• What it is like to get up in the morning and go to a job you love.

• How little I need to be happy

• That garden tools make the best weapons

• That eventually everyone on my team became attractive to me

• Though your first reaction may be to run far away, flatulence actually brings

people closer together

• Patience and flexibility are much more than virtues but a way of life in AmeriCorps.

• That bad habits are harder to break than good ones are to learn

• Caffeine cannot actually replace the need to sleep

• If you bite a goat in the neck you will establish dominance

• How to co-exist with spiders

• How to earn myself a set of beads on Bourbon Street

• That if you scratch it, it will indeed get worse

• That the best road trips are the ones you take with friends in a giant government

van

• Wearing the same pair of pants for a week straight really isn’t that hard to get used to anymore

• That a wood stripper will remove human skin but not human hair

• How much a team is impacted by each individual member

• That you can’t find love in a 15 passenger van

• That it takes more patience than you knows or understands to live and work with 10 diverse, opinionated people.

• It ain’t easy being green!

• That a man should not be judged by the color of his skin but by the amount of hair

he can grow on his head and face in a ten month span.

• The different forms poverty takes

• That going Commando ain’t so bad

• How to sleep almost anywhere at anytime

• That in AmeriCorps you never know when your next meal is coming so when the food hits the table, IT’S ON…

• That all you need in life is what you can fit into a red spike bag

• That buying underwear is better than washing underwear

• What “shark week” is and to just ignore the girls when it happens!

• That making a difference is as much about the work we do as it is about the

attitude we exhibit while doing that work.

• Electric shocks sometimes feel good

• What it is like to have four seasons

• With no other entertainment, 8 Corps Members can be transfixed by a bug circling a light fixture and a cell phone sound track.

• Steel toes are a good investment

• Seeing potential in something and executing a vision is probably the most

fulfilling thing in the world.

• That the AmeriCorps NCCC Atlantic Region Class 16 got some serious things done for America!!!