To kick off this week, I started at the ASPIRE program once again. My days with ASPIRE are becoming my favorite of the week, and the day I look forward to most. Seeing the same group of people each week gives me the opportunity to develop my relationships and genuinely get to know the participants. For the ASPIRE program, the ARC staff get to work, and then head off on their driving routes to pick up participants from home and bring them back to ARC. Usually, I stay back in the office to catch up on work and await their arrival. This week, one of the participants walked into ARC, saw me, and said, “I knew you were here! I saw your blue car!”. This was such a small comment, but it made me feel really good to know that she noticed the car I drove, and got excited when she realized that I was going to be spending the day with them.

With ASPIRE, we decided to go to the free market, and go back to the library to return some things from the previous week and scour the music section for a new CD to listen to in the van. While we were at the library, one of the participants walked around the books with me and helped me select my very first Columbus library book– which I think I was a lot more excited about than the average person. My favorite part of being with ASPIRE isn’t necessarily the activities we do, though I do enjoy spending the work day at places like the conservatory or the mall. My favorite part of ASPIRE is the people. I enjoy talking to them and learning about their interests, hearing their stories, or joking around with them. I have never had a job where I spend the majority of my day smiling.

Later in the week, I went to an ARC Adult Resource Center that I had never been to before. Participants in the resource centers are divided into “pods” in different rooms due to COVID. In one of the pods, participants were making turkey pinwheels that they were going to snack on later in the day. After the cooking took place, they put the recipe into a little booklet, as they do with all of their food creations. They have made three full cookbooks and are working on their fourth edition. Flipping through these definitely made me a little hungry, especially the dessert recipes.

Finally, at the resource center I had the ability to sit in with a couple program coordinators in a meeting where they discussed the logistics of ARC. The point of this meeting was to discuss where to place people and which staff would be with certain participants. It was interesting for me to see how much planning it takes to make this company work. Just when you think you’ve fond the solution, something else comes up. Or, something may look like a perfect plan on paper, but it cannot work in reality.