Personal Narrative: Working At Green Hills Retirement Home

As I grow up I learn to respect my elders more and more each day. I’ve been fortunate enough to have some grandparent influence throughout my life. Due to their abundance of knowledge on aspects to life that they’ve experience countless times I have been learning from them ever since I was young. With all the memories I have with my grandparents I knew working at Green Hills Retirement home would be a piece of cake. I feel as if I can find ways to relate to people rather quickly. By having that skill it became easy for me to introduce myself to some of the members of the retirement home numerous times. The ability to connect with certain individuals in a retirement home forced me to start building a friendship with some of them. At first, I

didn’t know what to expect. I haven’t been in a retirement home before… the only visions I had in my head were from the movies in all honesty. I thought the management at Green Hills would be tough on the old fellas or even me! Walking into day one of volunteering I was astonished by the leadership they have there. They were nothing but respectful to me during my duration of volunteering. Not only were they consistently nice to me, but also the residents. For me, it was simple. Some days I would sit down with some of relatively new members and walk them through a Resident Experience Survey and see what Green Hills is effective in and also what they need to improve on. What made me so special to the Green Hills employees was I wasn’t necessarily an employee due to the fact I wasn’t getting paid. The survey couldn’t be given by an employee, so they took advantage of that and sent me around asking some of these elderly resident’s questions. To be honest, I enjoyed it (for the most part). There came times were some of them just weren’t interested in taking the survey and I basically was just an annoyance to them. But sometimes I would run into someone (probably a nice old lady) that would ask if I could take the time to walk through the majority of the questions with them. With that being said, I came to terms with that fact that Green Hills didn’t have a lot of diversity on their Food Menu. I’d say about 80% of the people I asked that were associated with Green Hills had something negative to say about their food. On the contrary, nearly every time they chose to comment on our impeccable nurses and staff that take time day in and day out to take care of them. These residents were young once! They know they are slowing down, and with that being said they always made sure to acknowledge that they appreciate our help.
Giving surveys obviously wasn’t the only thing Green Hills made me do.

More often than not, I would be doing activities with them. These type of activities ranged from sitting down and making puzzles to fun and interactive games like Bingo. Bingo days were most definitely my favorite days at Green Hills. Before the game we would rally up as much troops as possible and the crowd never failed to disappoint. Old people enjoying down time by playing Bingo is an absolutely correct stereotype. There was always a group of grumpy old men that took Bingo to a whole different level. They would grab 2-3 bingo cards to attempt to increase their chances of winning the special prizes. Usually, I stayed away from that side of the table and spent most of my time eating their white powdered brownies. There came times were I had to assist some of the residents that had trouble seeing the bingo board. Other than a select few, mostly everyone won at least one game. When it came time to selecting prizes there was always some debate on who gets what but after a couple arguments they quickly forgot about it. Bingo always made the volunteer work much more enjoyable because seeing the competitive atmosphere in the room was something Green Hills can take a lot of pride in. They have created a scene where residents can compete against each other. Bingo gives some of individuals something to talk about, think about, and to look forward too. Being stuck in a retirement home has its perks, but it could

also be quite laid back. There isn’t a whole for them to do. So having something they can look forward to every week probably benefits the residents more than you could imagine!
On Friday mornings at 8:00 am I would volunteer and boy were they sometimes hard to wake up for.

Knowing that you could be asleep for another couple hours made getting out of bed even more difficult than it already was. After a couple times I got used to it, and had a routine set in- tact. Old people are frequently up in early in the morning, so 8:00am breakfast was fairly easy for them to get up for. Personally, I didn’t have an issue with Green Hills choices of food but I only had one meal only once a week. For some, they have had the same meal for breakfast day in and day out and I can 100% see why they want more of a variety on their menus. After breakfast was over they always scheduled an exercise session to help burn off those calories from breakfast off. The turnout for “Sit and Be Fit” was nowhere near the Bingo turn out but there was always a handful of active residents that participated. I would say I am a rather active college student. I try to exercise on a daily basis, but some of those exercises we did with them were not effortless. For being 80 and 90 years old, some of these people could really move still! Every session there always someone that woke up on the right side of the bed and took their exercises seriously. The more I spent time with these residents, the more I began to be comfortable around them. For just being around for a semester you learn a lot about what that generation and the memories they have. The time periods between me and these 90 year

olds were day and night. Green Hills Retirement home forced me to adapt to the older generation and understand that when you get to old to do some of the things you love, the small things make a difference.