Time to Learn!

Hey Everyone!

So, today was the first full day of NGLA and I got a twitter. I've never had a twitter before, so this day has been a huge day of first for me. It began at 7:28(2 whole minutes before my alarm went off) to a text from Kyle telling me that I better be awake. I glared at my phone and replied that I was. Figuring that two minute of sleep wouldn't even be worth it, I got ready for success and went to meet Kyle to get his Phi Kap cup! :) We then proceeded to Starbucks because I needed my Non-fat vanilla chai latte and waited in like for almost 40 minutes. It was horrible but worth it!

That's when our day really began. We went to a keynote speaker who talked to us about risk management. Then, we broke off into smaller groups and talked about why we were hear and what we hoped to gain from this experience. The main themes I took away were to be proactive and think I choose to not I have to and when looking at your circle of influence and circle of concern, you want to expand influence and shrink concern. This seemed really hard because my group only talked about what concerns we had about greek life on our campus, but we all hoped we could help our greek organizations by learning from the sessions to come.

At lunch, I got to talk to some Phi Kappa Thetas from WPI and, as it turns out, they knew a bunch of our Bridgewater Phi Kaps! I was excited. :) OH! Kyle won a twitter contest and gave me his gift card!

I attended a Local Panel Session first. I was super excited to see what other local organizations did and what I could bring back to help Phi Pi Delta. I learned about LGLC (local greek leadership conference) that was started up in 2010 for local greek organizations to get together and share ideas and learn from them! I really want to look into it because it sounds amazing. They had a group of eight greeks sitting in the front answering questions for us, so we could get ideas to bring back to our chapters. I was so surprised at how alike Phi Pi Delta was to all of these organizations. They all have a strong alumni base and they keep all of their alumni up to date with everything that is going on in their organization. They all had so much pride in being in local organizations and, even though some had considered going national, they never did because they like being unique. It made me so proud to be a Phi Pi. I am glad I'm in a local group and I loved listening to the other greeks about their local organizations stories.

The next session I went to was Flip Your Organization. This was really great because she talked about being more positive and focuses on positives rather than negatives. By looking at the positives, you can motivate people to do better. Instead of pointing out what they stink at, you can enlighten them on what they do well and they will strive even more to be better at it. She talked about four main ideas: Sign, Golden Rule, Encourage and Accept, and Enlighten. Sign refers to her belief that everyone wears a sign saying "Make me feel important". If you make everyone feel important, they will strive to be the best that they can be. Giving someone only negative feedback is damaging and can cause a person to lose motivation, but positive feedback will leave someone with warm feelings and the initiative to do better. The golden rule is pretty straight forward: treat others the way you would like to be treated. You shouldn't be rude or mean if you would not want someone else to be the same towards you. Encourage and accept refers to peoples ideas and opinions in chapter meetings and in general. Do not just ignore an idea because then that person is likely to never speak up again, nor will you ever know if their idea would have made a huge impact. Finally, encouragement, also pretty straight forward. If someone is doing someone awesome, then tell them you think so! If you notice a member or anyone going out of their way or just being nice, thank them. At the end of the conference, she had us write thank you cards. :) Yes, I did write a thank you card and I can't wait to give it to my person. I believe with these four things, your organization will be much more functioning and united.

My last session I went to was Fraternity Recruitment by Phired Up. I have been to Phired Up Fraternity Recruitment before, but I was unable to stay for the whole session, so this was a wonderful opportunity for me. He went through the basics of recruitment and gave out a bunch of ideas. If you do no already know Phired Ups three rules, they are: you can't recruit who you don't know, people join people not organizations, and Greeks scare people, so try to be like the other kids. If you are looking for great recruitment activities, this address (www.phiredup.com/free) will give you a bunch of free resources you can use. I talked to Matt afterwards to see if he could help me with ideas to recruit more men to Phi Pi Delta. He gave me an amazing suggestion. He said the week before recruitment, get recommendations from professors, RA's, friends, anyone and meet the guys one on one. He said I should introduce myself, told him he was recommended to me because he is an awesome guy and ask him if I could get him coffee sometime to talk to him. This way, it is one on one, and the guy understands what he's joining instead of walking into an event with only girls and thinking he arrived at a sorority event. :) It was great advice that I'm definitely taking!

After the sessions, we all went out to eat at a local restaurant and froze our butts off waiting for the bus to get back to the hotel! We attended a carnival where I found my Phi Kap friends and awkwardly joined thier kick line during "Don't Stop Believing". It was an amazing time. This was followed up with the Pajamie Jam Party. We modeled our pjs and walked down the runway to win prizes. It was a ton of fun. Shout out to MB for the wonderful idea and bringing snacks and fun games!

Well it's past midnight, and I'm a tired panda. If you want the detailed notes I took during the sessions, please feel free to email me at jdrisko@student.bridgew.edu and I will be happy to send them to you.

Delta Love,
Jen