Hi friends!
So after a 4 hour nap today, I am finally awake enough to really put yesterday into perspective and tell you all about the great things I learned on the third day of NGLA.
Yesterday morning started off with our keynote speaker, Ginny Carrol, telling us what "The Gift of Greek" is. Is the gift of being Greek the parties, the hazing or poor stereotypes about our organizations. Or is it our brotherhood/sisterhoods, our intellectual growth, our service to our communities, our personal development and the network of people we are connected to. Well, the answer clearly is the second option. She told us about her charity that she founded with women from other sororities called the Circle of Sisterhood. But I'll talk more about this later since I went to a session about it later in the day. One of my favorite quotes that put everything into a a bigger picture for me was "If your founders were sitting around a table with your chapter, would they be proud of you? Do you uphold what they fought for?"
"Start with Why" was the first session I went to. It was all about how organizations typically focus on WHAT they are doing, not WHY they are doing it. Knowing the "why" means understanding your purpose as an organization. Organizations that understand their purpose will think, act and communicate from the inside out and live their purposes everyday. Alex who was leading us asked a great question to ask our brothers and sisters about the events we put on. He said "If it is not going to make our members a better person, why are we doing it?" He also said in regards to recruitment that you can be the most energetic group but it can seem fake, but if you genuinely care about what the PNMs are saying, they will want to join you. A quote I took away from this session was "People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it!"
The next session I attended was called "The Monster in the Basement" which was all about unrecognized sororities and fraternities and how to handle them. The main point I took away from this was that their mere existence is bad for our organizations. People who are not part of Greek life would not know the difference between a recognized group and an unrecognized group. They just hear 'fraternity' and associate their bad behavior with us. They do not flow the same rules and regulations that the groups that are still part of the campus have to follow. Their advice was to figure out what value the group still have by operating around your campus and stop it.
The next session I attended was called "Back to Basics" and it was all about the importance of education and the Circle of Sisterhood charity. If you are reading this right now, you are more fortunate that 3 billion people. Only 7% of the world's population will ever receive a college degree. The Circle of Sisterhood is working to eliminate these statistics and help remove the barriers that are preventing girls from receiving an education. It only costs $50 to send a girl in Tanzania to school for a year. It costs $3.30 to provide a lunch for them for an entire year, which may be the only food they receive in the day. It is so simple to help and I was so touched by this session. As a future teacher, I strive to help kids be successful in the classroom, I should also be helping kids even just reach the classroom. I want to get the BSU community involved with this organization somehow, since we all are part of that lucky 7% of college students. We should give back and help.
My favorite speaker of the entire weekend was Justin Jones-Fosu. His session was "Be an ACTion H.E.R.O" and it was all about how to be an effective leader. H stands for Be Humble, don't be afraid to admit you make mistakes, it will make you more trustworthy. E stands for Be Empowering, give others the chance to lead and give them your support. R stands for Be Relational, if you don't know where people want to go, how as a successful leader can you help them get there? And lastly O stands for Be Optimistic. But be authentically optimistic. It is easy for us to say we have a good attitude, but how many of us complain when our computer is too slow, or our car breaks down. My favorite quote was "There are some people who would LOVE to have your bad days." Justin had been dancing and singing in our session, but after he said this the tone of the speech changed into a much serious one. He told us the story of his friend's wife who was diagnosed with cancer and only had 4 months to live. When she found out the first thing she said to her husband was "Well I guess it's a win win situation. If I die I will be in heaven and if I don't I'll be healed." How many of us would look having cancer with that same positive outlook...not many of us. But if we are genuinely optimistic, we could have that same attitude, which is truly inspiring.
Overall, I learned so much truly inspiring and motivating information that I cannot wait to share with my chapter and the rest of the community. It made me proud to be a BSU Greek and excitied to help our community become even greater than it already is. I am forever grateful to MB for giving me this opportunity to grow and learn as a leader and thank her so much for all that she does. We are so lucky to have such an awesome Greek advisor! I'll reflect more about NGLA tomorrow, but it's back to classes in the morning so I need to sleep now. But thanks to everyone who has been reading and stay tuned for my last post!
Goodnight Bears!
Much NGLA and Greek Love,
Kristen
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