Sectionals!!
My Alpha Phi Omega conference was this weekend. It started with putting together the info folders at 3:00 on Friday. I finished making the thank-you cards, worked on roll call for a little bit, and just hung out my brothers until people were registered and came to the Connection to join us.
It wasn't a big crowd, maybe a dozen people. Most people were coming on Saturday morning, and then the people that were here were in the leadership workshop. I sent them off for the scavenger hunt, listened to Kim and George rehearse their membership retention presentation while I waited. One team got everything on the list except for the paper airplane made out of hotel stationary. After leadership let out, we played hide and seek on old campus. We lost Aeriel for a while, but we got her to come out eventually. I went to bed around midnight.
Five hours of sleep! I had to get up, shower, and walk to the LUCC for registration, breakfast, and roll call. It was hectic, but we did get the roll call skit planned out. An as-seen-on-TV style advertisement of Alpha Phi Omega with Shea being the yelling Billy Mays guy. It wasn't an A+ job, at least not execution, but pretty good for being thrown together in fifteen minutes before we had to do it. The other roll calls were pretty entertaining too. The lone guy from Rolla won with his "hats of service" and second place went to the chapter who did a full parody of "Forget You" by Cee Lo.
We had to move our workshops from the LUCC back to Spellmann. I went to Networking, Fundraising, and the Historian Roundtable, which was unfortunately me and one other girl. I helped out at the HQ desk, volunteered to calligraphy the names on the DSK awards so Staci wouldn't have to download and trace a font. Lunch was pizza. My afternoon service was helping Rainbow Village, a program that rents low-cost houses to people with disabilities. It was right in my neighborhood, and didn't take too long to do. We just had to rake and hoe up a patch of lawn and then throw grass seed and water over it. Sure beats the creek clean-up that the rest of the brothers had to do.
Then it was back to Spellmann again, and I helped Staci make name tags for our chapter with new nicknames on them. I was the Official Scribe. Then we had the big section meeting. SEMO was elected to host Sectionals next April. Regionals is in January in Colorado, and Nationals is December in Anaheim, California. I know I'll make it to Sectionals, and I really hope to go to Regionals and Nationals too. Anaheim is near Disneyland!!
I had an hour to get ready for the banquet, and when I got there I had half an hour to furiously write generic messages in all the thank-you cards because I didn't know we had to hand them out with the awards. But I finished them, had a great dinner and dessert, listened to the keynote speech, and then it was the awards. We were ineligible for a lot of them, but Ashley earned several, and she and Kim made us a special "Zero to Hero" award for us being a small chapter working on a big project. Those two and Carolyn were elected as Railroaders, brothers that have gone the extra mile to reach out and befriend brothers from other chapters, so they got pins and special recognition for next year's conference. I got to stand up on the platform and help Ashley hand out all the thank-you cards I made. (Okay, her and Shea and Danben and my mom helped cut out all the tiny letters, and Lauren wrote in a few of them for me, but I am still the queen of cardmaking.)
We took a bunch of group photos. I'm the one in the pick jacket. I just wish you could see my shoes. I wore my white Chucks with the neon pink laces.
After the banquet and the photos was the dance. I don't dance. It's not that I'm embarrassed that I don't know any moves or think I'll look stupid, I just have no desire to. I'm apathetic to dancing. I'll do the Cha Cha Slide or the train (I do like that one, I don't have to move weird and there's no attention focused on me), but music really doesn't have an effect on me. I didn't want to feel like a total party pooper, so I made a mental list of songs that I would dance to, and one of them was Footloose. Even when they did play it and I did go out to the dance floor, I couldn't feel anything, so I just stood there. I like watching people dance, though, so I stood over the the side with my arms crossed and monitored people. (That's my only move, really. I call it The Principal.) Everyone misinterpreted this as "I want to dance but I am too shy!" so I was forced countless times into stanky legs and awkward hip gyrating and arm punches. Eventually I learned my lesson to just sit down at the tables where no one would bother me. I had a good time, though, and it was nice to see everyone being so friendly towards me.
I didn't get back to my room and into bed until 1:00 AM. I slept until 11, and had two hours to shower, get dressed, and finish making the card for my cousin's wedding that I also had to go to this weekend. It was a lovely event, actually. Really hot, but the food was amazing.
So I had a pretty good weekend. The only disappointments were all the waiting around on Friday night, only one girl showing up to my Historian workshop, and people awkwardly trying to force me to dance. Overall, I enjoyed myself and I'm really proud of my chapter for pulling this off. SIUE Spring Service Day is on Saturday, so I get to keep the APO spirit going. I can't wait until next year's conferences!
And thanks to mokusan for donating to our fundraiser! It's still open if anyone wants to help us replenish our funds after paying for all that. :)
It wasn't a big crowd, maybe a dozen people. Most people were coming on Saturday morning, and then the people that were here were in the leadership workshop. I sent them off for the scavenger hunt, listened to Kim and George rehearse their membership retention presentation while I waited. One team got everything on the list except for the paper airplane made out of hotel stationary. After leadership let out, we played hide and seek on old campus. We lost Aeriel for a while, but we got her to come out eventually. I went to bed around midnight.
Five hours of sleep! I had to get up, shower, and walk to the LUCC for registration, breakfast, and roll call. It was hectic, but we did get the roll call skit planned out. An as-seen-on-TV style advertisement of Alpha Phi Omega with Shea being the yelling Billy Mays guy. It wasn't an A+ job, at least not execution, but pretty good for being thrown together in fifteen minutes before we had to do it. The other roll calls were pretty entertaining too. The lone guy from Rolla won with his "hats of service" and second place went to the chapter who did a full parody of "Forget You" by Cee Lo.
We had to move our workshops from the LUCC back to Spellmann. I went to Networking, Fundraising, and the Historian Roundtable, which was unfortunately me and one other girl. I helped out at the HQ desk, volunteered to calligraphy the names on the DSK awards so Staci wouldn't have to download and trace a font. Lunch was pizza. My afternoon service was helping Rainbow Village, a program that rents low-cost houses to people with disabilities. It was right in my neighborhood, and didn't take too long to do. We just had to rake and hoe up a patch of lawn and then throw grass seed and water over it. Sure beats the creek clean-up that the rest of the brothers had to do.
Then it was back to Spellmann again, and I helped Staci make name tags for our chapter with new nicknames on them. I was the Official Scribe. Then we had the big section meeting. SEMO was elected to host Sectionals next April. Regionals is in January in Colorado, and Nationals is December in Anaheim, California. I know I'll make it to Sectionals, and I really hope to go to Regionals and Nationals too. Anaheim is near Disneyland!!
I had an hour to get ready for the banquet, and when I got there I had half an hour to furiously write generic messages in all the thank-you cards because I didn't know we had to hand them out with the awards. But I finished them, had a great dinner and dessert, listened to the keynote speech, and then it was the awards. We were ineligible for a lot of them, but Ashley earned several, and she and Kim made us a special "Zero to Hero" award for us being a small chapter working on a big project. Those two and Carolyn were elected as Railroaders, brothers that have gone the extra mile to reach out and befriend brothers from other chapters, so they got pins and special recognition for next year's conference. I got to stand up on the platform and help Ashley hand out all the thank-you cards I made. (Okay, her and Shea and Danben and my mom helped cut out all the tiny letters, and Lauren wrote in a few of them for me, but I am still the queen of cardmaking.)
We took a bunch of group photos. I'm the one in the pick jacket. I just wish you could see my shoes. I wore my white Chucks with the neon pink laces.
After the banquet and the photos was the dance. I don't dance. It's not that I'm embarrassed that I don't know any moves or think I'll look stupid, I just have no desire to. I'm apathetic to dancing. I'll do the Cha Cha Slide or the train (I do like that one, I don't have to move weird and there's no attention focused on me), but music really doesn't have an effect on me. I didn't want to feel like a total party pooper, so I made a mental list of songs that I would dance to, and one of them was Footloose. Even when they did play it and I did go out to the dance floor, I couldn't feel anything, so I just stood there. I like watching people dance, though, so I stood over the the side with my arms crossed and monitored people. (That's my only move, really. I call it The Principal.) Everyone misinterpreted this as "I want to dance but I am too shy!" so I was forced countless times into stanky legs and awkward hip gyrating and arm punches. Eventually I learned my lesson to just sit down at the tables where no one would bother me. I had a good time, though, and it was nice to see everyone being so friendly towards me.
I didn't get back to my room and into bed until 1:00 AM. I slept until 11, and had two hours to shower, get dressed, and finish making the card for my cousin's wedding that I also had to go to this weekend. It was a lovely event, actually. Really hot, but the food was amazing.
So I had a pretty good weekend. The only disappointments were all the waiting around on Friday night, only one girl showing up to my Historian workshop, and people awkwardly trying to force me to dance. Overall, I enjoyed myself and I'm really proud of my chapter for pulling this off. SIUE Spring Service Day is on Saturday, so I get to keep the APO spirit going. I can't wait until next year's conferences!
And thanks to mokusan for donating to our fundraiser! It's still open if anyone wants to help us replenish our funds after paying for all that. :)