Category Blogs

Starting A Fraternity

When I came to Drake University I was looking to join one of their Fraternities. Within the first 3 weeks, two men came up to me and started talking to me about a new Fraternity coming to the campus Phi Delta Theta. They said that they were looking for at least 25 people who wanted to be a part of Greek life on campus but in a different way. If we joined we would get the title “Founding Father” in our Fraternity. This means that we were the ones that started the Fraternity at the campus. I decided to sign with them as the 7th member of the new Fraternity. Within the next few weeks, we had 25 members and made it a Colony. Here is the article for when it happened, https://www.phideltatheta.org/2018/10/phi-delta-theta-returns-to-drake-university-with-colonization-of-iowa-delta/. Although this was great we still had a long way to go to become a Chapter and be a full Fraternity at the Campus. We now needed to get 45 members and have enough service hours for GHQ (General Head Quarters) to make us a Chapter. As of January 2019, we had 28 men in our Fraternity and we went down about 5 guys because they graduated in December of 2018. So now we had only 23 men and needed to build up to 45 men in our Fraternity.

In the Greek life community, there are specific times that Fraternities and Sororities can have people join. For us, however, we could open a bid, meaning we could ask someone to join our Fraternity at any point in the semester. But for Greek life in general it is always harder to recruit people in the spring because of people. First years, are either in a Greek life organization or are choosing to wait another year because they are doing other things with their time in college. The first years are the Greek lives biggest Target Market because they are new to campus and are looking for things to join at with people where they really know few people. This is why it was harder for our Fraternity at the beginning of turning into a colony to even get back up to 28 men. But we eventually got up to 34 men by the end up 2019 Fall Rush week at Drake. Finally, by the end of 2020 Spring Rush, we were up to 43 men and we had amazing service hours plus good grades that our GHQ passed us to become a full Chapter at Drake University. Sadly we were going to have our commencement after the Drake Relays but when COVID-19 hit we had to cancel it. But while that is sad we are now officially going to become a Chapter at Drake University and the Fraternity will be a full part of Greek life around the world.

For more information on our Fraternity https://www.phideltatheta.org/ is the best place since it is set up by our GHQ. https://www.phideltatheta.org/about/ this is the about page for easier access to learning the whole reason Phi Delta Theta exists.

My Sister?

Over the past 10 years, my family and I have taken in young women when her father died when she was 7. Even though she still a mother that she lives with and loves she is now a part of our family with everything that we have all went through. Her father put her in Martial Arts when she was 5 years old in order to make sure she could defend herself one day. At first, she was a shy girl who really hated going to Martial Arts because of the number of people. But with her father not letting her stop she stuck it out until this day and has become one of the most social and strong people I have ever met.

When her father died 10 years ago she started to come around our house more and more until she became like another member of our family. She and I have been doing Martial Arts competitions together since she was 10 years old. She has become the little sibling that I never had, being the youngest one in my family. So I finally understood why older siblings picked on younger siblings and I could do that to her. But to this day she still comes around and stays overnight or takes a drive down to Des Moines to see me. My parents have even taken her in as basically another kid if that’s taking her out to dinner or yelling at her for something she did. She even helps come move me when I need to move into or out of a dorm.

She also does other things than Martial Arts and hanging out with me she also has been doing Cross-fit for the past 3 years and has recently started to enter competitions. I personally think that she just likes to compete, from being in our family, so she wanted to do a different competition for when she couldn’t compete in Martial Arts from injuries. Like me, injuries come easy to her and 2 years ago she fell from sparring in Martial Arts and tore her ACL and part of her Meniscus. When that happened I was at her house every weekend to help her around and just to hang out with her so she didn’t go crazy in the summer. But like I said before she is a strong person and pushed through it and continues to do Martial Arts and Cross-fit to this day. She has become a member of this family and honestly, I can’t think of a world without her in it.

Wrestling

I started wrestling at an even younger age than I started Martial Arts. I started wrestling at 3 years old when my brother had joined wrestling. Wrestling compared to Martial Arts is a very different experience. Instead of just learning and having a good time when you are their wrestling was about always “winning” and doing your best. This means that sometimes simple drills would turn into a live match because it just becomes instinct not to let someone score on you. Wrestling taught me a lot though and it made me more of a mentally strong person than I ever thought I would be. In wrestling, you never stopped even if you broke a few fingers on the mat you just keep going. It really makes you think about everything that seems hard at the time and realize that it cannot be any harder than wrestling practice. There were times that I would come off the mat and have to throw up because of how hard of a practice it was. But that doesn’t mean that you stopped even after practice is over. Most of the time I had to keep pushing myself after for controlling my weight if that was running sprints or doing half an hour of drills after. At the time I thought it was all for the weight and only for that time but now I realize that all of the wrestling was to make me a mentally strong person. It showed me that even if I was tired or in pain that I could push through that and continue to reach towards my goals instead of quitting. From all of that working after and putting in the extra time it set me up to have a good work ethic. I now do not stop until what I am doing is completely done and I have done my absolute best on it. Even though wrestling is a very physically demanding sport it is also one of if not the most mentally draining sports in the world. To be constantly “fighting” with someone else for a better position it teaches you not to break under pressure. Wrestling to me is a sport that most people hate doing, especially practice, but in the long wrong is well worth every second. If someone’s child were to want to go into wrestling I would say that is a great thing but as a parent, you also cannot be mentally “weak.” Parents also have to push their kids in wrestling in order for them to get the most out of it. This is what wrestling taught me.

If People are more interested in wrestling they should check out these few websites https://www.trackwrestling.com/TWHome.jsp?loadBalanced=true, https://worldgoldwrestling.com/bio.html, https://www.facebook.com/stevenspointwrestling. These sites have the best opportunity for wrestlers and good information for people that want to start out or just learn more.

Martial Arts

I started Martial Arts at a young age, 5 years old, and have been doing it ever since. When I first started Martial Arts it was challenging for me because I was born with a disability called Clubbed Foot. This caused my balancing to be all over the place which means I fell down a lot due to lack of muscle at the bottom of my legs. That never stopped me though I kept pushing myself and kept my head high trying everything I could no matter if I fell or if I didn’t. By the age of 8, I was already through half of the belts leading to a black belt and had started to overcome the disability.

Besides overcoming my physical disability Martial Arts taught me basically everything I know about discipline, control, responsibility, and respect. In Martial Arts, you have to learn to be disciplined in order to make it through each class. For each class, you had to make sure that all forms you know are able to be done well, this made us have to practice at home so we wouldn’t get yelled at in class. We learned to control through our moves. We had to learn when to punch hard and when to punch soft or more controlled. We also had to control where we were striking in order to hit the correct spots. Responsibility goes with discipline where we had to become responsible for doing our forms outside of class and working on our student creeds. Finally, respect was one of the biggest things I learned in martial arts. Every single one of our instructors was either ma’am or sir which at a young age made every kid become at least a little more respectful to people in power.

Throughout Martial Arts, I have learned a lot but I have also achieved a lot. I was the second youngest person at my studio to receive a black belt at the age of 10. Which at my studio was clearly very rare, our instructor wouldn’t even test most people until they were 12 years old. I won my first national championship at the age of 8 and my first black belt national championship at 11. From there I went on to win 10 more national championships until I moved to Des Moines and stopped competing at the age of 19. Besides just competition, I also showed our talent to crowds of people through demos.

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