"Empty Words are What Stand Behind Empty Letters"

A 7am alarm did not come any easier on Saturday morning than it did Friday. The thought of coffee got me out of my bed pretty quickly. Kara and I were determined to not wait for 25 minutes in line like we did the morning before. We successfully got to Starbucks and back by 7:30. You would think three girls using one bathroom to get ready each morning would be extremely difficult, but I think that Erin, Kara, and I pulled it off quite flawlessly. We met up with our fellow Bears and made it to the convention center about ten minutes early to grab good seats for our key note speaker Ginny Carol.
Ginny centered her presentation around the business aspect of sororities and fraternities. She basically told us that businesses are looking for the leadership qualities that greek life is providing each of us. She was also telling us that being an alumni of a greek organization shows a lot dedication. It shows that members have a loyalty to their organizations because they have stuck it out through the good and bad. One thing that Ginny presented to us that I found interesting was that when two equally qualified candidates apply for a job the company looks at whether the person has held a leadership position before looking at each candidate's GPA. This shows how beneficial greek, not just during college but for the rest of your life.
After listening to Ginny's presentation it was time for the second day of our individual sessions. The first session I attended was Inspiring Creativity for Greek Leaders by Hajii Otto. Hajii's presentation was very high energy and got us all moving, and having a good time really quickly. He showed us different creative approaches to trying to get ideas out of your members. This information will be very useful for planning events like ball and homecoming themes.
The next session I attended was The Blame Game presented by Kyle Pendleton. This was more of a training session on how to effectively present this back on our own campuses. This session showed each of us that there are multiple people that can be held responsible for one situation.
After the second session I got the chance to have lunch with my fellow Phi Sigs (who had one of the largest representations at the conference woop!). It was amazing getting to sit down and talk about how different chapters operate the same organization. I was also super excited to get the chance to meet one of Phi Sig's former Grand Archons Josette Kauffman.
After the luncheon we all split up to watch three different showcase speakers. A large group of Bears all chose to attend Dr. Mari Ann Callais' presentation called From Ritual To Reality. This was my favorite speaker for the day. She immediately lightened up the mood by starting a sing a long with guitar. She then started to talk about this generation is so scared of talking about things like rituals, they they just completely avoid the subject and organizations often forget what they stand for. For the rest of the session we heard from different fraternity and sorority members (including two of Bridgewater's own!) about their organizations founders, and how different members of their organizations lived their values. The stories that I heard were so moving and inspirational. If would spend hours listening to those stories if I could.
My last session was centered around hazing. I got to hear first hand stories from three women about what they, as well as their chapters had to go through when they were accused of hazing their new members. This session did not apply to my specific chapter as much as it may have for other chapters but it was very interesting to listen to the different perspectives nonetheless.
After my last session my small group met up one last time to discuss the conference. During my small group one woman made the statement that "empty words are what stand behind empty letters." I realized that this quote was a good summary of one of the main themes of the entire conference. This quote means that if we do use the information we learned this past weekend to try to make the necessary changes in our chapter, this whole weekend was a waste of time. If no changes are made we will continue to have those members of our organization who don't contribute much and may just be in it for the letters. The message my small group tried to get across was that even though it may be hard to have some of these conversations these changes will be for the better of the chapter.
After small group sessions I took the short break before the award banquet to get a little relaxation time in. Kara, Erin, and I then each took turns getting all dolled up to spend the final night of NGLA rooting for BSU to bring home some awards. Even though we did not win any awards this year it was very motivating seeing all the potential awards we could be trying to obtain throughout the year.
After the banquet, the roomies and I all crawled into bed after an extremely long, and information filled day. We all spent the next couple of hours talking about our experience this past weekend and having a little roomie bonding sesh. I am so incredibly glad that I was given the opportunity to get to know Kara and Erin so much better.