A new life

Hello friends, followers, casual blog enthusiast etc.,

I know its been a while since I've graced you all with the pleasure of my blog, but I stand by it because I have been busy and have had no time to write it. Even now, I should be studying for a Stats exam that I am sure to fail, but am currently forced to pull an all-nighter for reasons that will be disclosed at another time. I have told you guys about some things that have helped shape me over my freshman year, but have left out probably the biggest and most important to me. 

When I started thinking about college, there is one thing that I knew I wanted to do. That thing was to go greek. Now, most of you reading this (depending on the demographic I am currently making up in my head) are making an image in your head of a typical douche frat boy wearing chubbies and sperrys like they're going out of style. In some places, and some cases you may be right. However, this has not been my experience. 

This is where Dirty Dan comes into focus. This was the one other person in my early "summer camp" program who knew he was going Greek. He is the type of person that you were all probably imagining in your head.  If there was anything in the world who could convince me not to rush, it was him. Unlike a lot of people, I had a positive outlook on Greek life before i even experienced it. I have had many relatives in Greek life, and had seen how much they liked it and what it did for them. In fact, these are some of the many reasons I was so dead set on it in the first place. 

There is an app that used to be pretty popular, you all my know it. Its called Yik Yak. This was completely owned by the Greek community before it became huge on just about every college campus in this great nation. This app stood for everything I hated. The amount of negativity I saw between all of the fraternities made me cringe when I opened the app. There was no way between the things I saw on the app and Dirty Dan that I would find myself in the middle of all of it. But this was me being stupid. 

There are bad apples in every organization, and I had just been paying attention to the ugly. Are fraternities pretty preppy? Sure, but am I going to sit here and act like I'm not. I may not deck myself out in Vineyard Vines and Brooks Brothers everyday, but I'm not slumming it in sweatpants and cargoes everyday either. If you do that, more power to you, that's just not me. As much as I tried to think of the good in fraternity brethren, it was too late by the time rush came around for fall. I was out the door getting ready to walk to the Greek village, and I was stopped by misconceptions in my head. 

So there I was. A GDI (God Damn Independent) for another semester at least. I really didn't know how to feel about this. The group of people I hung out with at the time were extremely anti-Greek, and I bought into it at time. I vowed I would stay a GDI forever. Obviously this didn't last, but it was heartfelt at the time. Eventually I realized that I wasn't doing much with my college life, and I wasn't living up to the grand vision of what I thought my college experience was going to be like. I'm going to let you guys image that for yourselves. I spent most of my early college days sitting in a chair on my phone watching people play video games. While this wasn't the worst because at least I was with people I cared about, it still wasn't what I wanted out of a college career. If I wanted to got o class, come back, and just sit and watch TV or something, I would've stayed close to home and commuted. 

This is where I was saved by PSE. I will go into PSE a little later on in this blog, but PSE stands for Pi Sigma Epsilon. It is a professional business fraternity for marketing and sales majors. My reasoning behind joining was taking baby steps towards joining a social fraternity (not proud that that's the reason when I started out, but hey, I'm honest). It was NOT like what I thought it was going to be. I absolutely fell in love with it. After about a month, I was fine with just staying in PSE and that's it. I wanted to invest in my professional life, and PSE gave me the chance to do that, and excuse me if I sound overly confident for just a minute, but I was really damn good at what I was doing. This is also where I met RJ and Blake. These were two of the coolest most upstanding gents I've ever had the pleasure to meet. When we were running for executive board positions, I noticed something. Both of them were in Pike. 

Before you read any further, SLOW DOWN. I know this all seems insanely predictable. I meet these people, they're both in Pike. He must go join Pike the next day. No, this simply made me want to look into it. Alpha Tau Omega, that's the family fraternity. Unfortunately, they did not have that on our campus. With that being said, I really didn't know anything about any of the fraternities on campus. If any of you go to a college that is fortunate enough to have fraternities and sororities on campus, you know exactly what "Greek stigmas" are. Every social Greek organization have sayings about them that are usually not to flattering. If there is one thing I've learned so far, is that you cannot buy into these. Are some of them fairly correct sometimes? With certain members in each one, sure, but its surly nothing to take to heart. 

After careful consideration, I decided that it was going to be between two fraternities for spring rush, Phi Kappa Psi and Sigma Alpha Epsilon. Just an FYI, this WAS before all of the things went down with SAE. Even after a lot for that stuff came out, I am not ready to condemn every SAE I see (two of them being my roommates). This is again beside the point (I tend to do that a lot). Eventually, I was walking back with Charlie and I said to him "Its been decided, I'm not rushing". I felt ok with my decision and like always, I went back to HQ (Ottawa West room 2208) and sat in my chair like I did every other day. Right as I sat down however I got a call from a kid named Sean. I had no idea who this kid was, but he asked if i wanted to come in for an interview to see my thoughts in opinions on Greek life. Being the over confident 'businessman" I was, I thought they were interviewing me on my newly elected position in PSE as a freshman. 

Then he told me to meet at the Pike house and I was very confused. I figured I'd go and see what this interview was really about and I could not have read it anymore wrong. I went in and sat on a couch with two guys who looked like they lived there and I quickly realized, this was an interview to see what I thought of them, but also what they thought of me. Again, SLOW YOUR ROLL. This is not some kind of douche bag thing where they were seeing if I was "fratty enough" or anything like that, it was simply to see if I would even be a good fit for the organization. I really don't understand why people take that as a bad thing. If you were running a business, wouldn't you want the best people? Of course you would. And I'm not saying a fraternity is a business, I'm saying that when any organization wants to be successful, you have to find people that want that same success.

But that's beside the point (It should really just be my catch phrase at this point). In the interview, I really got to see that there was nothing different about these guys. They were just a group of friends who wanted to excel in everything they did, and do it together, and I wanted to be apart of it. While I was excited about this potential opportunity, I didn't want to sound too eager. I wanted to play it cool. Yes, I just said that. I wanted to play it cool. I told them that I was interested in Phi Kappa Psi, and they said "Hey, that's totally cool were not going to try and tell you were the only ones on campus. Check everyone out and make sure you're making the right decision."

That right there proved my point. People have the wrong idea about fraternities. We know were not the only living things on this planet. We know not everyone sees it our way and were ok with that. I eventually was called for a second interview, received my bid, and signed it on the spot. I felt great about my decision to join Pi Kappa Alpha and I have never looked back. People can say what they want about what fraternities, but from my experiences in being in one, its about having a support group of brothers who refuse to see you fail, and will do anything and everything to see you succeed. Joining a fraternity was one of the best decisions I have ever made and I am proud to say that it has helped shape me into the man I am today. 

This was a new life. A Greek life. I'm a Pike until the day I die and until then, I'll be saying the same thing to young men interested in the wonderful world of Greek life. #RushPike.