Day 1

I arrived at Forest park at 8 am, only to realize I was the only one of my classmates coming in that day.  For the first 3 hours of the day I sat in a room with a guy named Josh, he was Jim the boss's assistant.  We had to stay inside because it was windy and to cold outside to work.  We sat there while he explained what we were going to do through out may.  He kept on repeating the same thing over and over, sitting in the office became extremely awkward.  I soon realized that we were basically going to have to mulch trees everyday for 8 hours, I didn't know what i had gotten myself into.  After lunch it warmed up enough to go outside and spray pesticides on plants and trees for the rest of the day.

Day 2

Again I arrived at 8am, and was relieved to see a familiar face, JC was there as well.  Again Josh explained for the two hundredth time what were were going to do for the month.  Then finally we went outside to mulch trees.  At first it wasn't that bad because at least i had JC to talk to, but after an hour or so we were both so sick of mulching.  It was terrible and the worst part of this was that we both knew we had a whole month left of this torture. 

Day 3

Thank God it was Friday, today was the last day i had to work this week.  Like always we started at 8 am and today Robby was part of our crew.  Today was especially awful because we had to mulch again and it was also freezing outside and worst of all I forgot pants.  In spite of all this I was grateful to have some fellow classmates to work with.  Robby even called us the goon-squad.

Day 4

Its Monday again, there is nothing worse than waking up early on a Monday and going out to mulch trees for eight hours.  There has got to be something else we could do.  Worst of all is that we do all the work, Josh the supervisor has done nothing but sit on his gator while we rake, carry wheel barrels, and dump mulch.  He just sits there on his gator and smokes while we do his job for him.  This is ridiculous.  If he tries to tell me to do one more thing this way or that way I might flip out on him. 

Day 5

Nick Kram, Daniel and Scott all joined us today.  Like Robby, JC, and I already realized this absolutely sucks.  There is nothing worse than doing this all day and knowing that we are doing someone elses job for them.  They are getting paid for our work.  A good thing about today is that i get to leave a little early so that i can catch a flight to New Jersey to throw for some college coaches for the next week.  When I told him i had to leave early today he got mad and told me i was not going to graduate.  Like one hour is going to keep me from graduating, its not like i can't make it up.  I could easily come one hour earlier in the morning to make it up, but no.  i guarantee the only reason he is mad is because he actually has to lift a finger after i leave.  (because i'm always the last person to leave, usually leaving when their done for the day at 3:30) Again i almost went off, but its a very good thing that i composed myself and didn't. 

Day 6

After my week in New Jersey i returned to this hell.  My flight got delayed an hour this morning and again Josh got mad at me, and now he's trying to make me come another full day.  Ive been up since 3 am and i have to hear this from him.  You can't even compensate how pissed off i am right now, it was just an hour is it really a big deal? I'm a volunteer helping you our, doing your job infact and the least you can do is say its ok no big deal i understand you can't control your flight schedule.  But NO i have to come and work a weekend day now.  Is one hour really that big of a deal?!?!?  I really don't know how much longer i can take this job, i didn't know i signed up to mulch trees everyday for 8 hours strait, nor that id have to deal with a lazy jerk and do his job.  Its a really good thing that Nick Kram and some other classmates were there today, at least i was able to talk to them and hang out during lunch. 

Day 7

Mulch, yupp surprise surprise today we mulched.

Day 8

We finally did something different! Today I went with the tree demolishers Matt and Mike.  They took down a tree that had a massive whole in it.  I stayed with them for most of the day while they cut the tree down then cut it into pieces. I got to know Mike and Matt pretty well, Matt lived in Hawaii for 8 years sailing boats and living the dream before he went to Colorado State.  After college he began to work in forestry and lived in Los Angeles for many years, he even had a managerial job there.  Then two years ago his mother became ill and he moved back out to St. Louis, she has since past and he is currently looking for a bigger and better job in LA, like he had before he moved to St Louis.  Mike is a little different, but he is from North Carolina and went to a small college in Indiana, where he played basketball and golf.  He told me all about his crossfit adventure and how he is planning on attending a competition soon.  He said he needed a hobby so he wouldn't end up coming home and just eating and drinking beer.  He said he chose crossfit so that he would stay in shape and still be challenged physically and mentally.  It was really great to get to know these guys and do something else besides mulch.

Day 9

Today is a Saturday and i still have to work.  On a positive note its not with the forestry department, its with a nice lady named Mary Lou.  I was able to plant flowers all day at the soldiers memorial, with many other volunteers.  I even met a kid named Nick who is a grad student at SLU.  He was great to talk to because he was a business and Econ major like i intend on being.  He told me all about the experience, we even got to talking about one of his friends who was an Investment Banker in New York, this was great to hear because that in a career i would like to pursue.

Day 10

We cut down small trees today and raked leaves, it was better than mulching, but still not a fun job in the slightest.  We managed to finish this whole job by 2pm, so i guess that means tomorrow we have to go back to mulching.

Day 11

Today we mainly watered trees and sprayed pesticides, which i managed to spray all over my clothes.  It was very awkward and boring today because i was the only one working out of the whole group.  I am just glad to finally be done with my may project. 

Finally my may project is complete and overall i would say it was not what i wanted it to be.  It was not fun in the slightest, i wish i would have chose something else, anything else.  It was great to talk to the two tree demolators and Nick the SLU grad, but other than that i feel i didn't really gain much from mulching all day everyday.  I learned that mulching sucks and that i should stay in school and keep on getting good grades so that i dont have to end up like one of these guys doing boring, mindless, tedious tasks everyday.  For my last month of Burroughs i would have rather been in school, that way i could be with all of my friends and classmates until the end.  This May Project also drifted me away from my friends, because i wasn't doing the same project as them and i just didn't have time to see them with all the hours i was working.  I haven't seen most of my friends in two to three weeks as of today, and i wish Burroughs would have organized a project for most of the class to do together.  Overall i had a pretty bad time through out this project, there were some good parts to it but not as many as i would have liked.  If i were to redo my whole project again i would have definitely done some more research on what other projects i would have been able to do.  In the end I do blame myself for picking this project.