When the lights go down on NGLA

Very quickly NGLA has come to a close. It is the last day and we are heading to our key note speaker who forced us to make new friends. She actually had us get up and move around the room to a new seat. My new friend was a Gamma Phi Beta woman from Rutgers named Janine
. Through conversation I learned she was very proactive considering that she was on Panhel as a sophomore. After this speaker we all broke up into our sessions until our affiliation lunch. At lunch I made some connections with our regional director, Joe Turk and the executive director Mike Ayalon. This was a little weird to me at first because these men were so down to earth. Luckily, Mike was heading to the same session I was after lunch so I got to chat with him and Jordan for a little longer.
T.J Sullivan was our presenter, and he was by far the most inspirational speaker I had listened to during my whole NGLA experience. T.J. made me question everything about the dynamics of chapter. Through his lecture he compared going to chapter and marketing products in the real world. Some people make the mistake of chapter needing to be all about business but when this is how it is, people become distracted and uninterested. This leads to an unproductive chapter or so T.J says. He challenged us to go out of the norm, mix it up and eventually people who weren't usually active, will become more active. Leaving the meeting, myself and Jordan had plenty of information to bring back to our chapter in terms of restructuring chapter dynamics.
Lastly, the awards banquet started and everyone was stressed to impress. Unfortunately, we didn't win anything, but we did take some pretty sweet pictures  on the stairs before retiring to our rooms and ordering dominos at 2 in the morning.
 Overall, my NGLA experience was well worth it and very eye opening in terms of leadership roles. It has inspired me to strive for more in the positions i am in and to also strive for more positions of leadership. Through the Key note speakers and individual sessions I have gained a lot of knowledge in Anti-hazing, unrecognized organizations, how to build my resume and motivating unmotivated members. I had not recently been on any trips or worked with many members outside of my own organization before, so this trip has served as a segway into what i hope will be my contined outreach into the BSU greek community! I would just like t thank all of those who i was able to share this experience with, to the people who had chosen me to attend this prestigious conferences, and to my advisors for helping us get to the point we  are at in our leadership positions. #NGLA15 #bears #sigmapi #lookatmichael