Let The Journey Begin!

The day has come and we have finally arrived in Hartford, Connecticut for NGLA! After a relatively short ride in the van (primarily due to the fact that I slept most of the ride), we arrived safe and sound at the beautiful Marriott Hotel & Connecticut Conference Center. Upon arriving, Tyler and I had the opportunity to see our Regional Director Joe Turck as well as meeting another Sigma Pi from the Executive Office - Kevin Pons. It's so great to meet other brothers that are a piece of the bigger scheme of things on an international level.

After some debriefing with the rest of the delegation and deciding on the fantastic sessions I'll be attending tomorrow, it was time to attend the keynote speaker: Michael Miller! I've heard Michael Miller speak plenty of times before - due to the fact that he was always around for orientation (training and the first four summer sessions). I've never seen him speak about Greek Life, so this was truly an experience for me.

Michael was being his normally enthusiastic and loud self while delivering a few messages that truly resonated with me. The keynote presentation revolved around the acronym ARMED which stood for Articulation, Recruitment, Motivation, Elimination, and Delegation. While all of his points had merit, the two that truly spoke to me were motivation and elimination. As Sage of Sigma Pi, I find motivation to be one of my most difficult tasks. How do you motivate a chapter of 40-50 men that don't want to help themselves? Michael alluded to the idea of making things a competition and truly challenging brothers to better themselves by pointing the finger. Although elimination sounds like a harsh term - this was one of the most impactful pieces of Miller's speech for me. Michael talked about how we always tend to try and appease to the "bottom 10%" of the chapter - the naysayers and brothers who make life more difficult than it has to be. This truly got me thinking and gave me motivation to go back to my chapter and resolve similar issues.

Even though we have spent less than 12 hours in Hartford, I can already tell this is going to be a pretty great time. I'm looking forward to bonding with the rest of the delegation and learning things that I can bring back to benefit my chapter and the BSU Greek community.