I didn’t know what Sheetrock would feel like. I imagined some sort of cold rock but instead the leader of Habitat for Humanity pulled out a large square of gray, plaster-like material.

“Have you ever used a power-tool before?”

I respond, “I . . . I mean . . . I think so?”

He rubbed his dusty hands on his hat brim, took out a power drill and started drilling screws into the wall. It was amazing how easily the screws simply dug right in: there was almost no resistance.

“You wanna try?”

He handed me the drill and a couple screws; I held my breath. It felt heavy and awkward. I approached the wall slowly and tried to hold the drill-bit straight, but it trembled under my weak hands. I reached inside my workman’s belt (a trendy device Habitat lends to all its volunteers) and pulled out a screw, which the drill head immediately sucked up.

“It’s magnetic,” the leader said, winking.

The drill squealed as soon as I touched the wall and in a few seconds the screw fell on the floor. It was only after my fourth attempt, that the screw actually went in at the right angle.

That was just the beginning. Sophomore Julia Schneider, first-year Ben Lerchin and I  were helping put in Sheetrock for an entire bedroom. In a little over two hours we managed to measure the open wooden portions of the wall, cut the plaster material with a power saw and screw in Sheetrock.

Who knew that our work would later insulate a woman’s house from the bitter cold of Walla Walla winters? And she worked on it too. Habitat requires all its soon-to-be residents to spend hundreds of hours working on their own homes. It’s not just a gift.

Yet those two hours were a gift to me. The work at Habitat for Humanity that Saturday was surprisingly satisfying. There’s nothing more satisfying than cutting a piece of Sheetrock and drilling it into a wall. It just makes you feel accomplished. It’s like you actually created something or you performed a task that brought value and that had an objective.

Not only that, but I learned some crucial life skills. I mean, who knows what could happen if there’s suddenly a huge storm and we have to rebuild all our houses from nothing?

So grab a couple friends and join the Community Service House for one of their Saturdays of Service. Every other Saturday, the house offers multiple community service options you can select weeks in advance. It only takes a couple hours and it’s totally worth your time.