Story #23: Abbie Menendez
“JEP is my home away from home” is a sentiment we often hear from our student staff members. 2020 grad and JEP Alumna Abbie Menendez shared that same feeling. She has a unique story that USC Dornsife summarized well during a profile they wrote about her two years ago, “A Navy veteran and transfer student a few years older than most of her peers, she worried at first that she wouldn’t fit in. But she found her campus home volunteering with USC Dornsife’s Joint Educational Project (JEP), one of the oldest and largest service-learning programs in the U.S.”
After her first mini-team assignment teaching a middle school class, both she and the JEP team quickly realized that she was going to thrive in the teamwork environment of our program assistants that lead our volunteers. During her time as program assistant, Abbie was always excited to help out, whether that was to train our younger program assistants or to help with any new social media content. As a matter of fact, Abbie and her friends and fellow PAs Tali and Tommy actually won our very first social media contest. When we asked her in 2019 what her favorite thing about being a program assistant (PA) is, she – without hesitation – answered, “meeting all of my new PA friends.”
Photo: One of our last pre-pandemic memories – Abbie and a few other former JEP student staff members taking a quick break to hang out with miniature therapy horses that were part of an event happening right in front of the JEP house.
As her two-year assignment in the Teach for America Corps is almost up, we are excited to see what she’s up to next. In her Dornsife profile (that you definitely should read), she shared, “I want to try to take a big role where I can effect change, becoming governor of California or mayor of L.A.,” she said. “I set these really crazy goals sometimes because when you work toward them, whether you achieve them or not, you still better yourself.” Whatever she may venture upon, we know it will be something great because whatever Abbie sets her mind to, she will achieve.