10/17/09

It really does. Good news, I’m the publisher! More pertinent  though is that I’m also the president of the Habitat for Humanity club at Eckerd College, and if you’d like to participate with Habitat for Humanity then email me at:

hfh@eckerd.edu

Now, if you must continue…

Here around 8 AM, we don’t groove to Notorious B.I.G., The Beatles, or Bob Marley (though singing is never frowned upon), but instead as I arrive on site I’m greeted with the rhythmic sounds of hammers meeting nails, intermittent electrical saws slicing thru wood, and boards falling to the floor, which all comes together in a “construction sonata”, like something out of Stomp! We’ve arrived at the Habitat for Humanity construction site, and so begins our Saturday morning party.

Now don’t mistake me for a hermit, as I also enjoy to drink and socialize with my friends at the end of a hard academic week, and there was once many a time I was up till 3 AM needlessly carousing (like last Saturday night, oops…), but my weekend began to have more structure 2 years ago when, after doing Habitat for Humanity with the Service Learning office, I decided that I would start the Habitat for Humanity Club in collaboration with ECOS.

I never found effective stress relief until I consistently starting building homes for socially and economically disadvantaged families. Got stress? What better way to release it than to mercilessly pound a 4 inch nail into a two by four. And the feeling at 12:30 PM when I’m done? I’ll avoid the anti-drug mantra to save us all a collective eye roll, but seriously what a rush! You’ve done more productive and beneficial work for humanity before noon than most people do in a weekend, and you often meet and work with the future Habitat house owners. At the same time you gain important skills that will be useful when you yourself own a house one day.

-Breen Eitel