C O L L E G I A T E A F F A I R S F O R L I F E !
I was blessed to have my parents but I wasn ’ t telling them about how I was only getting a few hours of sleep a day because I was going out Wednesday through Sunday . When I entered into a leadership role , my goal was to establish mentorship and a support system for our chapters . I would say I have been extremely devoted to my role .
The Association for Fraternity / Sorority Advisors ( AFA ), is one of the biggest conferences / meetings for greek life advisors and headquarter officials across the nation . In 2015 , I had the pleasure of attending my first AFA meeting in Fort Worth , Texas when I became the Chapter Development Officer . I remember I was nervous and anxious . Here I am a “ volunteer ” with no experience in higher education bumping elbows with all these university officials . I remember freaking out and thinking how I was going to mess up and represent the organization poorly since I wasn ’ t an actual professional . I relied on Pinterest to help me create business attire outfits because I ’ ve been in food & beverage my entire adult life and never had to wear business attire outside of KDChi . To say I was intimidated by this conference was an understatement . I was going to have to meet and chat with just about every greek life advisor from each one of our chapters . How was I going to do this ? That year I remember walking through the conference space and seeing rows and rows of universities . I walked through that hall , stopped at just about every table where we had an established chapter , and discussed each individual situation with each university having no notes in hand . Before the conference , I reviewed all of our monthly chapter reports and studied our annual chapter assessment report , in order to be ready and prepared .
I took my role in leadership seriously as if it were a paying job because I strived to ensure our chapters received the help they needed . One of our sisters that was in attendance asked me what institution I worked for , and my response was , “ I don ’ t , I work in a casino ”. She was in awe of how I remembered every detail and how off the back of my hand , I knew chapter by chapter and who needed what . I realized that I didn ’ t have to be paid to get things done , I just had to be committed with a purpose .
I struggled most of my post undergraduate years with developing a career path for myself . I graduated with my degree in Kinesiology in hopes of getting into physical therapy school . Unfortunately , my GPA wasn ’ t going to allow that to happen . I started dating my now husband and remembered being concerned with my profession and how his family would feel . I didn ’ t want his family to think I didn ’ t have more ambitious goals for myself , so I continued to work harder with my KDChi role in hopes it would provide the professional experience to move into higher education in the future . I established a number of connections and began looking into staff positions at different universities . However , nothing came up locally that I could pursue . At this point I was now married , and my husband works for UNLV so I decided to utilize the perks and at a discounted rate , I took graduate classes that would help develop my role in Collegiate Affairs . I took a counseling class to understand how to better facilitate and mediate chapter issues . I took a sexuality course to better understand different perspectives and learn more about title lX . I was eager to learn how I could do better in supporting our organization and continually seek opportunities to educate myself to better support the development of our division .