Circle K – helping hands
Finding time to think of others in between school, work and extra curricular activities can be tough. That’s why Laura Hunter decided to join Circle K International – to give her a chance to serve amid many other responsibilities.
The club, organized and sponsored by a Kiwanis Club on a college or university, selects its own officers and committee and plans service projects important to the students and community, according to the Circle K Web site.
Hunter said the club meets at USU twice a month, the first and third Thursdays of the month, on the third floor of the TSC. This school year, the group has been involved with helping out at the Top of Utah Marathon, the Everton Genealogy Library and Utah Festival Opera Company. Last week they took valentines to patients in a nursing home.
“I have to come and do service sometimes,” said Hunter, a sophomore majoring in accounting. “It’s easy to overlook when you’re busy with so many other things.”
Hunter said Circle K has about 10 members and the goal for this semester is to allow each of them to come up with and carry out a service project.
Brittany Haskell, a senior in French, said she was excited to deliver the valentines and joined Circle K because she had been in Key Club, a similar service club for high school students.
“I think it’s important to be involved in service because we need to help each other,” Haskell said. “I feel like I need to help, so I try to lend a hand when I can.”
K.C. Naegle, a junior in computer science, agrees and said service gives students a greater outlook on the world.
“Service is something greater than yourself,” she said. “College is really self-centered, and it’s good to think about others.”
There are a million different ways to serve, Naegle said. Sometimes it can take a few hours, but a lot of times it only takes a few minutes to help someone in need.
One service project Brian Parrott, a junior in accounting, has been thinking about doing with Circle K is teaching people about financial planning. He said he wants to serve wherever he can in the club.
“If you don’t serve, you start feeling like a walking cesspool of filth,” he said. “You feel like a body of water that never gets cleaned.”
For more information about Circle K, students can attend their next meeting on Feb. 15, or e-mail circlek@cc.usu.edu.
-mnewbold@cc.usu.edu