The smell of a civic duty:

A number of years ago, I had to do community service one semester while living on campus. While I won't disclose too many damaging details, I will say that my roommate should have taken the sock off the smoke detector when he was finished "microwaving his lunch."

The resident adviser noticed the dangling, white tube sock during a fire drill, and he reported the potential hazard that led to my roommate and me doing 35 hours of on-campus community service, an online quiz about the importance of not tampering with fire safety devices and a one-page paper about my burning awareness of said importance.

I wasn't overjoyed at the alteration of my semester plans, but I was grateful to not be expelled.

I'm no longer on speaking terms with my former roommate, so I speak for myself when I say I'm glad to have the "civic duty" behind me. While having 35 hours isn't at all a heavy sentence to fill, along with being a hell of a lot better than expulsion, it took me four months of self-pity to reach the 35th hour.

My roommate was miserable company on (and off) the job, along with being the reason I was in an environment that didn't feel very much like one of the building blocks to becoming an English professor. I also had a handful of coworkers who offended and sometimes scared me.

One such coworker ­— we'll call her Dot — was a woman who loved to tell me more than I wanted to know about her racist worries, her neglectful family and her long-distance relationship.

She ensured opportunities for our chats by having me personally help her refill the milk machines seven or eight times throughout the day. Never mind that the machines only needed refilling around twice a day; Dot was on the case: "We don't want these kids walkin' up to the machines and not gettin' any milk. Makes me feel bad thinkin' about it."

I was on a ladder one afternoon, stuffing a sloshing four-gallon bag of chocolate milk in its bin, worrying that it might rip and ruin Dot's year.

After seeing a friend of mine leave after finding great satisfaction with the sight of me in an apron, she said, "He doesn't seem too bad for a kid who's half black."

"What makes you think he's half black?" I asked, unable to think of a better response, beyond my feelings about equality and her senility.

"Honey, you need glasses. Here, grab this skim milk here and then you can get back to the dishes."

My primary job was to wash dishes in an oversized apron, with my roommate and coworkers gathering and washing dishes with me in an assembly line that I may someday tell my grandchildren about when they need guidance or a guilt trip: "Now, young'uns, don't be sticking your tube socks on fire alarms, or you'll be washing dishes for months. But if you're lucky, you might get a free orange cream-sicle at the end of the day."

Washing dishes is one of the least appealing activities to me, especially given that I don't eat meat or take much relish in washing strangers' meaty, sweaty leftovers.

I quickly learned which cooking tools smelled the worst and needed the most scrubbing.

I was a slow learner, however, when it came to avoiding burning my fingers in the rush of loading the heavily steamed cups and trays, which I was very efficient at managing when it came time in the evening to wash the biological warfare disguised as cookware, the beefy skillets and cheddar cheese-caked pots.

Community service wasn't ultimately a negative experience.

It wasn't an ideal form of volunteerism, since it was more for punishment than good will that I was there, but the 35 hours I spent taught me the importance of friends, whether they're "half black" or tampering with fire safety equipment.

I learned how many cream-sicles I can carry in one hand (three), and my roommate learned how many socks he should leave on smoke detectors (zero).

Upon reflection, those 35 hours would have gone by much more nicely if I hadn't turned the ordeal into a four-month nightmare, so I recommend that you serve your time as quickly as possible before you develop an abnormal hatred for tube socks and dirty dishes.

Also, prolonging your community service may leave you faced with the risk of a peculiar challenge: fighting the urge to drown a racist in chocolate milk.

That is community service.