New Year res­o­lu­tions are so last cen­tu­ry!

Promis­es to eat right, work hard­er, ex­er­cise more and en­joy the sim­ple plea­sures in life get caught in old habits and Face­book: the vor­tex of time-wast­ing and pro­cras­ti­na­tion. Well, maybe not all the time.

But it's easy to get caught up watch­ing oth­ers rather than get­ting out there to do our­selves–de­vel­op­ing our own in­nate tal­ents. The tal­ents of new vol­un­teers at Al­ta aren't al­ways ap­par­ent to them when they are trained. It is when they en­ter the class­room to be­gin teach­ing that they wit­ness their own evo­lu­tion as an ac­tive agent of change in the lives of their stu­dents, as well as in their own lives.

Three tu­tors share their thoughts on their time at Al­ta and how they saw the world around them change when they be­came vol­un­teers.

Mary Mc Bur­nette

This quote has stuck with me since I first read it, "One day you'll on­ly be a mem­o­ry, strive to be a good one." Just last Sun­day (sic) I had a chance of meet­ing a for­mer stu­dent in Ari­ma. Dur­ing our short chat she ex­plained that she has kept up with her writ­ing and has con­tin­ued the jour­nal/es­say writ­ing for her per­son­al en­joy­ment.

I was sur­prised when she said "I would not for­get you. I think of you of­ten." This had me won­der­ing about what ex­act­ly did I do. She was al­ways a friend­ly per­son, but know­ing that she thinks pos­i­tive­ly of me and her ex­pe­ri­ence with Al­ta, that she was able to ex­press this so joy­ful­ly took me back to the quote above that Sun­day.

Raphael Sookram

My com­mit­ment to Al­ta has not waned over the years and must be seen as tes­ti­mo­ny to how re­ward­ing and ful­fill­ing this ex­pe­ri­ence has been for me.

In­ter­act­ing with the stu­dents in the class­room is a sheer de­light as every year there are a few stu­dents who just grab what you give and they don't look back...

Al­ta has changed me for the bet­ter. It has been in­stru­men­tal in mak­ing me less self-cen­tred and more car­ing to­wards oth­ers. I'm more open to ran­dom acts of kind­ness and op­por­tu­ni­ties to make a dif­fer­ence in the lives of oth­ers. I man­age time bet­ter. I'm more com­mit­ted to peo­ple and things I care about... In short, Al­ta has giv­en me a sense of pur­pose and di­rec­tion which was lack­ing.

Philip Sealy

Be­sides be­ing able to pro­vide this ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ty to adult stu­dents who are oth­er­wise ex­treme­ly skil­ful and knowl­edge­able in their re­spec­tive work ar­eas, it is the nat­ur­al ca­ma­raderie which ex­ists among the tu­tors...

Some­times I do meet stu­dents on the street who open­ly and con­fi­dent­ly greet me with "Hi Sir," af­ter which fol­lows a brief con­ver­sa­tion on their progress in the class.

That kind of chance en­counter does leave one with a sense of per­son­al sat­is­fac­tion in know­ing that, as an Al­ta tu­tor, one may be mak­ing a pos­i­tive im­pact in some­one else's life.