Final Writing

When I started to do service learning, I thought it will like an easy work. What I expected on the service learning was that just helped people who came to a computer lab. Compared to my expectation, my service learning was totally different.

Before I started the service learning, what I knew was that I had to change or remodel Open Hand's Event database. So I thought that this company might use mysql and postgres for its database. However, when I went there and saw their database, they were using Microsoft Access which I never use before. In here, I noticed that my expectation was wrong because I had to study how to work Microsoft Access.

At that time, my community partners want to change their database using an web application. So what I thought that I could use mysql and connect to django which I started to learn in Computer Society class. Then I did not have to study about Microsoft Access. I and my community partners made a plan to create this web application using django. During the making a plan, my community partners said before creating this web application, we had to get permission to their IT people.

From here, we had a conflict with IT people. I thought that IT people disagreed with our plan, so they kept complaining it. But thing is that one of their complaining was persuaded me. If we created the web application, there were no one to handle if it had a problem when I was not there. We took 3 weeks to make a decision for this situation.

What I felt was that this was not like a class project. When I did the class project, we built a program which a professor was asking to. However, the service learning was not. I had to think about all the cases including the future. Finally, I felt was that service learning was like a job because I had to listen to my community partners so I could get what they really want and their want could be changed easily. Also, after this service learning, I knew how to use Microsoft Access.