Day 3: "They call me if anything comes in with an anchor on it!"

Tuesday was easily the most difficult day for me.  I have always been someone who needs steps to follow, a specific plan of action, and be able to accomplish small tasks to eventually achieve the goal at hand.  The task for today was to develop a vision: this giant, pie-in-the-sky goal and ideal of what we wanted the world to be like in a handful of years.  Now, I already have a problem thinking about what I'm going to do with my life come school in the fall, so thinking of how I want the world to be different was one of the biggest brain-stretching moments for me.  After much thinking, I decided that I wanted to focus on changing the views of Greek Life on college campuses and in the surrounding communities.  After sharing in pairs and groups in my family, I got a better handle on what I really wanted because they were able to tell me things I was thinking, but couldn't really articulate.

Then we had lunch and a break, so Kelsey, Caroline, and I went on a walk so I could show them all around camp.  I loved talking to these sisters who I'd just met two days ago.  We are strangely so much alike and I loved hearing about their chapters and the differences and similarities to mine.  Walking and talking with them was a good and much needed break from vision-development, and it made me so thankful that I'm a Delta Gamma.  I felt like we had been friends since the beginning of freshman year and I love them just like I love any of my Drake DGs.  

After our walk, it was back into the thick of vision-development.  The next step was to create a headline and newspaper story for 10-15 years into the future as a report on the status of our vision being accomplished.  At first, this seemed to be pretty simple, and the majority of people wrote their articles, had them approved, and were finalizing them on giant poster board, but I was not on the same path.  I struggled to focus on my own work and started worrying that my vision wasn't really that great and that it would be too common and over-done.  I got caught up in my own down-spiral, falling backwards quicker than I was realizing.  Although this sounds dramatic, I felt like I was having a mild panic attack, just not sure what to do or where to go or what steps to take next.  Apparently it was pretty obvious that I was struggling because Lorie, a DG who works in the Delta Gamma Executive Offices, came over and asked me if I was doing okay, and even though I said I was fine, she knew well enough that I wasn't telling the truth.  She spent the next ten minutes talking through my vision with me to help me better understand what direction to go next.  I could not be more thankful that Lorie cared enough to take the time to sit down with me, calm me down, and help me back on track to keep moving forward.  

That night, we were able to have dinner with executives high up in each of our respective fraternities and sororities.  The DGs got to eat with and hear endless stories from Laurie Roselle, VP of Fraternity Programming at Delta Gamma Executive Offices.  She is so dedicated to and passionate about serving others and has continued her Delta Gamma career past her collegiate years, becoming more and more successful in each endeavor.

Things I don't want to forget about today:
-  using the "Five Why's" to figure out what I am really passionate about
-  stretching myself and really thinking out of the box to develop my vision
-  learning that best way to gain supporters of your vision is to develop a commonality