Dishes clank, coffee stirs, and teenagers awkwardly smile; all try to find their place as organized chaos ensues.

It's another world for most volunteers at the Soup Kitchen, but a reality for many who eat here everyday.

The regulars are called by their first name -- often making jokes with the people handing them their plates. But some are known for the wrong reasons, known to pick fights and cause friction. Between it all, there's never a dull moment at the Soul's Harbor Soup Kitchen.

From the men who ask for your name and number to the people who barely notice that you're there, everyone is at this facility for one reason: to eat.

It's fascinating how our daily provisions are illuminated when we're around those who have so little. I barely even think about where my food comes from or why I'm so privileged to have meals everyday. And usually when I think of starving people, the images of children in Africa immediately come to mind. Despite having enough food in our world to feed every living beign

Coming to the soup kitchen made me realize once again that people in our community go hungry everynight -- and if there wasn't services like this one, where would many of these people turn?

One woman ate eight bowls of soup! She wasn't the most polite or soft-spoken person, readily demanding what she wanted. I found it easy to serve the people who appreciated what I was serving, and tougher to address those who didn't. Maybe with my waitressing background you expect people to reciprocate the effort you put into serving them. When you don't get that attention or respect its seems almost worthless.

But then I thought... what am I here for? To get people to like me or to get polite, candid compliments? Or am I here to give some of my honest time and energy to something that's almost foreign to me.

Volunteers like Beth Ell help create a better perspective, she started volunteering 12 years ago and has stayed the course ever since. Now she has a dynamic relationship with the clients as well as the helpers. I'd describe her as the "mama bear" of the establishment, making sure everyone's happy and everything runs smoothly.

If someone like Beth can invest more than a decade of their time into serving others, I should be able to give back a few times a year, even when it's not easy to do so. And as students, we may have a unique role -- to philanthropically invest time and energy into all kinds of people, showing the marginalized in our society that we do care about their future.

At the end of the day I realized, it's not all about me.