My Story/college

My Story - Chelsea Stone

Chelsea reflects on the impact on her life of four years of Pay It Forward Tours.

This isn't really a story--or, if it is, it's not just a story. Rather, this is a thank you--a thank you intended for STLF as a national non-profit, the national STLF staff as inspiring, motivating leaders, and to every participant and leader along the course of STLF's history who has served to make STLF what it is. I thank you all for the opportunities that you have given me.  Due to your greatness, I have been able to discover my own and have known passion, inspiration, motivation, and, greatest of all, love through service.

Yesterday, I arrived home from my fourth collegiate Pay It Forward Tour. This, unofficially, gives me a "lifer" status--I went on my first tour as a freshman and went every year up to graduation. Each tour I went on changed my life. Every other person on my bus had an impact on me as a person. But, more importantly, my experiences with STLF have opened my eyes to an irrefutable truth: I--and everyone else in the world who wants to--can change the world.

When I got on my first tour, I believed that I could create change in the world--well, probably, someday. I was a very active student and I always had been. I suppose I thought that all of my actions were leading up to a person I would become and that person could change the world.

I now know differently because I do KNOW. I know I can change the world. Because I have.

In 2008, Servewiser helped the environment by controlling noxious weeds in a state park in Missouri for one of their service projects. On one day in 2009, You Can Serve However You Like cleared a lot of fencing and growth so that the city of Monticello, IN could establish a safe skate park that their kids could hang out in (the project was finished this past winter). On a blustery morning in 2010, the Purple Parrots helped clean up one of the poorest towns in the nation and received an outpouring of gratitude from the town's residents in return. And this year, 2011, on the fourth day, The World's Best Bus gave the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store in Niagara Falls a new home (and excellently modeled some of the clothes).

These are all tangible ways that I and my fellow PIFTers have made an impact in the world. They all demonstrate how the world has been changed by us. And they're all important. But there's something else, I think, that is even more important: I know that I have changed the world because I have developed meaningful relationships with over one hundred and fifty individuals. Some of them only lasted the length of the tour. Some of them have endured time and are still continuing to grow. Every single one of them, however, has been filled with love.

That's really the best way to change the world: love your peers. Develop relationships that improve each other's lives. Live a life of kindness. Demonstrate trust. By loving each other, we give each other opportunities for untold impact.

No other organization understands this like STLF. So thanks. Thank you for significant others, roommates, soul mates, knowing someone everywhere I go, bus crushes, celebration city crushes (yeah, that happens, too), and every friend who I met for the first time on a charter bus.

Thank you for breaking down stereotypes of all kinds, games everyone played at summer camp in elementary school, safe space, ending my dislike of NDSU, and room for growth.

With laughter, tears, and love, Chelsea Stone

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