For my community service hours this quarter, one thing | worked at was Pep Band for various basketball games, mostly the Friday home games. I play the Baritone in our band, and I believe that I chose this project due to reasons stated in the social cognitive personality theory. As I know that I play in a group and I need to help the group, I set goals for myself, and for me to get better, I need to practice, and I can get practice at the basketball games.
I also believe that as stated in this theory, your belief in yourself or your abilities can change depending on the scenario you are in, and as I know that I can play the baritone well, I perform at these games, while if I was performing labor I wasn’t as good at, I would slow down, as | wouldn’t believe I could do as well. As playing baritone is simple to me since I’ve done it for years, much like how most people in band can play their instruments easily, I consciously thought about playing my baritone, as it was something that I knew would be effective for me personally for community service.
Another reason for me to play in the band is that they are one of my in-groups, because I know all of them well. When I am in a group I know, I can be very social with them, and there is not a single person in the band I couldn’t at least say something about if I saw them. The band members are a group I have always gotten along with, and I have no problem with being with them, so I volunteer because I know that they will be at the games as well. Many people know that the band is one of my largest ingroups as well, as they are one of the groups that I talk to the most out of anybody in the school.
Being with an in-group had a large impact on where I volunteered, as I most likely wouldn’t have volunteered at a job where I didn’t know anybody, but I volunteered at every game where we had a pep band present. My work for the band was pro-social, as it helped other people. Many people enjoy having the band play for basketball games, as I could tell when I saw people making the gestures for YMCA or singing along to the school fight song. No matter my motives for helping the band, playing music, or for choir, singing The Star Spangled Banner, got the crowd excited, showing that it is obviously pro-social work that helps out several people.
Helping the band and choir was incredibly beneficial to the school, and I believe it not only go the crowd excited, but I believe that it got the players pepped up too. People usually know what songs we are playing, and people get excited when we play songs that they recognize. I believe that another reason I had to work with the ban have been the Normative Social Influence, as I knew that people enjoy listening to the band play, and I also knew that me helping could make the band sound better, thus making us more accepted as a group to perform at games, and getting more people excited instead of nobody responding when we play music.
Since we have very few people that play low pitched instruments, especially tuba and baritone, we needed me to show up to play certain songs, because the other low brass mostly missed a lot of games. Another reason I came was that songs like Seven Nation Army and Eye of the Tiger do not go well without low brass, which I learned when I was practicing for the national anthem, and for a warm-up, the band played Seven Nation Army, and even though they didn’t miss any notes, since there was no low brass, it sounded strange.
I volunteered to go to these games not only for hours, but because I wanted the band to be able to be a group people enjoy having perform, and a lot of the songs we play at Pep Band performances are songs that require low brass to sound good. If we played Seven Nation Army without me present, while it is a good song that people know, it would backfire, because I have melody. I wanted people to like the band, and without recognizable songs with proper instrumentation, that would not happen. s One reason besides experience that I am good in music is that my use of my brain is evenly divided between left and right, allowing me to work well with both sides, meaning that while I do well in math and science, left brain activities, I also do well in right brain activities, such as speech and drama, or music. Music najor right brain activity, utilizing the creative side of your brain to process.
My using both sides of my brain about equally means that I can run logic, such as finding ways to play my baritone more effectively, while also being able to easily use my right brain to understand the music I was reading and playing. Without this whole-brained activity, while I could play my baritone, it would be much harder than the way I currently do. One stereotype I notice some people have of the band is that we are all geeks who don’t do anything fun, and while some people have this stereotype, I don’t believe it’s true, and neither do quite a few other people.
In the time I have been in the band, I have known them to be one of the groups I have the most fun being with, and they are not geeks as some people might say. Many of the people in band are kind and go to parties often and they do not fit the stereotype of “the band geek. ” While it is not something that bothers me, I have noticed that some people have this stereotype, and it is very inaccurate. The band is full of gamers, partiers, and athletes, groups that obviously break the stereotypes that people have of the band.
I believe that the reason I enjoy being around the band so much is that they break this opinion and can be very social and are one of the most vocal groups I have been around. Another job that I did was working at the soup and chili cookoff at my church. This job was actually altruistic, as I didn’t need to help, I gave up time that I could have been doing other things, and I knew at that time that due to pep band, I would have required hours easily, so I didn’t even originally do it for this project. I, along with helping set up and keeping things stocked, actually made a taco soup myself.
While this work was prosocial, as there was a freewill offering to help with church projects, my work was done due to altruistic purposes of me just wanting to help other people. I also counted up the votes at the end of the cook-off, which lasted for two hours. While I enjoyed the cook-off, I didn’t need to work at it, but I still did, as I wanted it to go off better, and I knew that I could help by keeping the non-soup or chili items, such as salads and hot dogs, stocked, and I cook a good amount at home, so I also knew that I could help by making something for others to eat.
I believe that one other reason that I worked at the cook-off was that I categorized all of the people there as Christians with the same beliefs that I have, so I wanted to do something to help them with an event that they enjoy attending every year. This connection with other people made me wish to help them by doing as much as I could. If I didn’t know the cause my work went to or the people it helped, I probably wouldn’t have worked as hard as I would for a fundraiser people enjoy and that goes to help the church in various projects.
By helping out the chili cook-off, I was able to help a group I identify with, which made me feel good about the work that I did, because provided a service to a group of people that share similar beliefs to me. One last job I did for volunteering was running the cameras and audio system at my church for recording. My work was essentially moving the camera to be focused at the right area, and moving the audio switches to keep everything at the right volume, and also posting this on the church’s Facebook account so that people could watch live or at a later time.
This helps keep the service smooth for people present by not blasting the volume or having everything barely being audible to the congregation, and it also allows people at home, by choice or necessity, to watch our service. I strongly felt an unconditional positive regard from the congregation, as even if I messed up, I usually got complements on the audio. This unconditional positive regard is probably one of the reasons I volunteered at the church, because I knew that even if I messed up, everything would be fine in the end.