Rituals

Rituals are an important part of the pledging process to become a member of a fraternity or sorority. Each ritual holds meaning behind it and defines certain values of the fraternity or sorority. The rituals of our fraternity are kept secret as are probably the rituals of most other fraternities and sororities too. For me, rituals are the most important part of the pledging process. They are the standing pillars. Even if everything else changes, at least I know the rituals will still be the same. A guy who pledges a hundred years after I do will still go through the same rituals that I did. He will learn about the values of Pi Delta Psi in the same way that I have. By going through the rituals of my fraternity, I learned about how the values of the fraternity fit in with my own values. After rituals I would feel like I had become a better and more knowledgeable person. The pledging process is supposed to be a way for the pledges to become closer with their pledge brothers and closer to the fraternity, and I believe that each ritual within a process is like a stepping stone to fulfilling this goal. The rituals of my fraternity is the root that connects me to the each brother of Pi Delta Psi. We may each try to improve our fraternity in different ways, but down to the very core, to the very roots we all share the same beliefs. The rituals of a fraternity define its identity. It is what makes each fraternity or sorority unique, and that should always remain the same.

In this class, our main goal is fraternal change. We are always looking for ways to improve the fraternal image or how fraternities are regulated. I think one way to connect the members in the councils is to define our core values, and then create rituals to emphasize these values. We can start small by doing this within each council, and then progress towards creating rituals for all the councils. These rituals can then be passed down to future council members. I believe we already made a head start when we defined the values of each council. We might be an ever changing in our goals, but I feel that the values behind our goals should remain the same.

My Values

In class we learned that the first step of becoming a leader was to know how you want to lead and what you want to do as a leader. Where do these ideas come from though? Why would I want to help change the image of fraternities at OSU to one that is less focused on drinking and more focused on something such as community service, or why would I push to help unite the four Greek councils? I want to make these changes because of my values.

Values are a set of beliefs that are important to you. They define you as a person, from how you act towards others to what you eat to what you are wearing everyday. My values define me as a person and play a role in every aspect of my life.

Value One: Success
To me success doesn't mean to have the most money or the biggest house in the neighborhood. Success to me is living a comfortable life in the future with friends and family who I love, and who I can share my success with. However, this is just a dream of mine. Everyone has dreams; that's the easy part, but how can you make your dreams come true?

Value Two: Hard Work and Sacrifice
I believe that with hard work and sacrifice, anything is truly possible. Unless you are a very lucky person, your success will mostly be determined by the effort you put in. Unfortunately my life was not handed to me on a silver platter, nor have I won the lottery yet. This leads me to realize that if I am to be successful and live my dremas, I have to work harder and sacrifice more than everyone else. I have followed this value throughout my whole life, even though I haven't really thought about it until recently. But hey, it's worked wonders for me. I've always had good grades because I studied hard for my tests and did my homework. I got a full ride to OSU because while most people were just taking it easy in highschool, I was studying for the SAT's. I recently got accepted into the NIH Summer Internship Program because of the time I spent on applying to various research programs during Christmas break.

How have I benefitted other people's lives because that's what being a leader is all about. The best thing is, hard work leads to everything else. Hard work has led to my success in life, and because of my successes, I am able to help others around me too: my family, friends, fraternity brothers etc. Through my hard work over the years, I have been able to help make their lives more comfortable. My full ride to OSU lifted any financial burden from my parents. Now they don't have to pay that $20,000 a year. Because I do well in my classes, I am able to help my friends when they have questions or problems.

Value Three: Service
My service comes naturally because I am a good guy by nature. I am willing to sacrifice a lot of my time for my family and friends. When they need a favor I'm always willing to help, but I am also willing to help people I don't know. When someone asks me for directions, I tell them. When someone drops their books, I will help them pick it up rather than just walk by like it didn't happen. These are all small things, but they all count towards making someone's life easier.

How do my values fit in with my council's values? Last week we talked about becoming closer to the other chapters of our council such as doing community service events together or socials with each other. We have a dream, but it will take hard work for that dream to become reality. Even with hard work, we might not be able to reach our dream by the time I graduate. However, I am still willing to work hard to pursue our dream, and hopefully the members who come after us will want to do the same.

MLK Day

Ever since i joined our fraternity two years ago, we have been volunteering at different places during Martin Luther King Jr. Day. We'd volunteer at places like the Alzheimer Center. In the past years that I have volunteered, I have just treated volunteering as an obligation, something that would also help me gain honors points. However, after starting the leadership class this year, I realized how important volunteering on a day like this was. If I am to be a leader, then these are events I should be putting forth the time and effort to attend. This year our fraternity went to volunteer and spend time with the people living at the Crown Pointe Care Center. These were all old people and many of them were sleeping, but we played Scrabble with the people who were still awake and talked to some of them. These people because they don't talk much themselves, and I could see that talking and playing with them made them happier. It didn't take much time or effort either. Attending events like these made me realize that being a leader isn't very hard. It's about doing the little things that won't take much of your effort, but will have a big impact on their lives.

Another cool video on change

Leadership's key qualities

First Day

The first day of class was pretty hectic. I'm not gonna lie, I've never been in a college class like this before. One word to describe the class: change. From the very first five minutes of class, I learned that this class was about change. How can we change fraternities/sororities at OSU? How can we change fraternal structure all around the U.S.? But most importantly, how can we change ourselves to become better leaders and better people? These all seem like big questions that could be too much for one person to handle, let alone a college student. I know I was intimidated after Tyler's speech about changing the world. However, my thoughts about changing the world changed after our first class.

We started out by watching a movie called Pay It Forward. I'd already watched the movie once before, but it's been awhile. Pay It Forward is about this 7th grader who is inspired by his teacher's challenge to change the world and comes up with a system called Pay It Forward, in which he would help 3 people out with something they couldn't do themselves, and then those 3 people would pay it forward and help 3 more people themselves. In the end, if the system worked to perfection, there would be a lot of happy people in this world. After watching the movie, I was pretty impressed with the idea. Not everybody can just come up with a genius idea like that, and whose to say everyone would play their part?

All my questions were answered during our next assignment in which our class was to Pay It Forward by making sandwiches for people in need. During the assignment, I also got to talk with a lot of my classmates and get to know them, particularly, Dana of Alpha Kappa Alpha. I learned what position she held in NPHC, what her major was, what her career goals were, and what she thought about the concept of Paying It Forward. In the end, we both decided that Paying It Forward was just help somebody without the expectations of being paid back for your good deeds.

While making sandwiches and thinking about Pay It Forward, I realized that changing the world was not so hard. I realized that changing the world is taking it one small step at a time and it's definitely a group effort. Changing the world is about helping others out and inspiring them through your actions to help other people as well. Even if only one out of three people are inspired by your actions, the world will still become a better place. Just like changing the world, we can change the fraternal structure of this country in the same way. We must start it now, and through our small changes, set precedents that the future leaders of the greek councils can follow and build upon.

Intro

Hi. My name is Qi Fu. I am a third-year undergraduate majoring in Biomedical Sciences. My educational plans are to obtain a Ph. D, and then go on to become a successful cancer researcher and establish my own lab at a university. In my spare time, I usually like to play sports or video games. My favorite sport is basketball. I also like to play football and have recently started rock climbing. My favorite video game right now is Call of Duty. In general, I am a friendly and relaxed person. I am open to all ideas, and i'm not really particular about anything. I like to be efficient and straightforward when doing things.

I am part of Pi Delta Psi, an Asian cultural fraternity that is part of the Multicultural Greek Council. I chose to join Pi Delta Psi because I liked to hang out with the guys in the fraternity, and it gave me a group of people I could trust. What I like most about Pi Delta is that everyone has each others' backs, and is willing to help each other when needed. On top of that, I liked the small size of Pi Delta Psi because I am close to each of the brothers. Pi Delta Psi helped me become more knowledgable about Asian culture, something I lacked in because I came from a predominantly white town.

After reading this Blogabus, I feel that this class has the potential to help me improve my fraternity and the greek life of Ohio State in many ways. I also like the set-up of this class because it is more interactive and open to expression rather than just being a boring lecture on the merits of leadership. I look forward to taking this class, and hopefully after taking this class I will gain some leadership skills that can not only improve fraternal life at Ohio State, but also help me in my future career.