18
“
OCTOBER 2012
district events
CKI really helped me bring out the
leader and voice in myself. The
entire environment surrounding
CKI is just extraordinary. . . I really still
can’t explain what had happened to
me, and if I had to give a reason, the
only reason I could give would be CKI.
district summer
Jerry Bao
Diablo Valley College
Back in high school, I never even considered joining any
club, let alone even join some sort of group, and even
when I first started my college lifestyle, I never thought
that I would take part in anything extracurricular in the
college. But here I am now, a part of Circle K International
(more specifically DVC’s CKI), something that really has
changed my life.
A year ago, my best friend Matt had been having discussions with me about CKI, and believe it or not, the
entire time I had thought they were having meetings at
the Circle K gas station. I thought, “What kind of bizarre
club meets at a gas station and is all about community
service?” At the time I was still figuring out things in my
life and what my future held for me, so I just shrugged
off the times he’s asked me to join the club. After a year,
a lot had happened to me and I was going through a really rough patch in my life and this was when he really
persuaded me to join DVC’s CKI. He said it was fairly new
and, remember, I still thought at this time this was some
club where meetings were held at a Circle K gas station,
so I figured why not I’ll join. What’s there to lose?
Boy was I surprised when I found out that the meetings
were actually held AT the college and not at a gas station,
and that Circle K is the collegiate version of the Kiwanis In-
ternational Organization. Now since this was a fairly new
club, not many people were there and I thought, “This is
a really small club. I wonder what this club is all about?” It
wasn’t until I went to my first service project, Chinatown
YMCA Healthy Kids Day, did I finally realize what this club
is all about, and boy did I have fun at that service project.
Now at that time, I still had reserved thoughts about
the club and whether it was worth my time or not, but it
was keeping my mind off of things at the time and keeping me productive, so I continued on with CKI. It wasn’t
until two district events later did I finally realize why Matt
kept rambling on and on to me about CKI.
The first district event was STC. This was a one day
event and it was fairly small compared to the other district events, but even in that one day I had met a bunch of
new people, learned a lot about leadership, and became
VERY confused about a lot of the things that people were
talking about in regards to CKI (I still didn’t know everything regarding CKI and the Kiwanis organization.) After
that day, I thought, this club really has a lot more to it
than I thought, and decided I’d stick it out for the year
and see what it brings me.
The second district event was DSSS, and this event was
really the event that sealed the deal for me regarding