Jake

Name: Jake Milnor

Major: Art History/Hispanic Studies

Hometown: Long Island, Virginia (it exists, it’s just very, very small)

Service: Student Organization for Medical Outreach and Sustainability (SOMOS), APO, I’m involved in a few independent organizations while home in the summer too, mostly an outreach program geared toward kids in juvenile detention centers

Favorite book: I don’t really have one favorite, but I like Federico Garcia-Lorca, Faulkner, C.S. Lewis, and Jean-Paul Sartre a lot.

About Service: I was raised (and still live) on a small dairy farm, and I had a pretty secluded upbringing and high school experience. I was the first person to go away to college in my family so when I came to William and Mary I had a HUGE culture-shock, but I immediately got involved with service because of the abundant opportunity to do so at W&M. I’m pretty hardcore Catholic, so I see service as a moral responsibility of any healthy human being. I think it’s impossible to fully enjoy life and be well, while there are people in the world who suffer or do without. It’s a collective responsibility to alleviate this and we must serve each other. I don’t think anything we do in life matters, unless we submit ourselves to serve others and improve the environment of our surroundings. I know my view sounds a little bleak and medieval, but what I see at W&M makes me very optimistic and hopeful for the future because true-service without personal recognition or gain really seems to be the thing to do on this campus, and I think that’s amazing. People our age are capable of doing things greater than themselves, and the service atmosphere at W&M really proves that. I don’t think I could ask for a better situation.