Ever been to Ohio? Well, I went for the first time last weekend over our reading period. In case anyone is wondering, it’s a 9 hour drive to get to Columbus from Appleton, WOOHOO! The reason I drove all the way to Columbus with four of my friends is because we had our Delta Gamma Institute all weekend, a great example of how being involved on the Lawrence campus has allowed me to travel to places I have never been before, and offer opportunities I may never have had before.
Since I am VP Finance for my chapter of Delta Gamma here at Lawrence, I got to attend this Institute with our President of Delta Gamma, as well as the VP Communications, VP Social Standards and VP Programming for our chapter. This was a great way to get to know them better and help build us as a team to lead our chapter in the right direction. Now more on what this “Institute” is all about.
So Delta Gamma Institute took place in Columbus, at the Hyatt Regency next to their huge convention center, with over 800 Delta Gammas from ALL across the country and from schools in Canada as well! It started off with a tour of our Executive Offices which are right in Columbus (SO COOL); they showed us the offices and tons of items from when our chapter first started and throughout the years since. The weekend was jam packed – we started at 3 on Friday and finished at 12:30 on Sunday. It was a whirlwind of new experiences and new information to improve my leadership abilities. We participated in activities centered around understanding and utilizing our own personal strengths, being our authentic selves and what makes a good leader. We split into rooms based upon which position we held, and then within our rooms we split into small groups of about 12-15 girls who had a similar chapter size to us, so we were able to understand each other’s issues more readily. This small group was the same for the whole weekend; it allowed me to connect with people I may have never met otherwise, and now I have many people I can reach out to if I need support or help.
Throughout the Institute we got to listen to inspiring women who had worked hard to get to where they were. In fact, the whole weekend was inspiring, as it taught us to be strong, authentic leaders. I was inspired by the amazing girls that I met every day, and learned from what the officers in my own chapter had to teach me. At some points we met with our own chapter so that we could come together and see how all our different strengths could help each other as a group and how we will lead our chapter together the best we can. It was interesting to see how different we all were, and as well as to see where our strengths overlapped. It taught us all a lot, and we had so much to bring back and teach to our chapter.
Learning from hundreds of different chapters taught us a lot, and gave us lots of cool ideas to incorporate into our own chapters. We all were very different, especially in size as well as location/schools, which helped us to understand and learn from each other. It was amazing to be surrounded by 800 women who were all my sisters; we all came from completely different backgrounds and places but we all shared the common commitment and love for Delta Gamma. It was amazing to start the weekend at our Executive Offices learning about the women who founded Delta Gamma, and then to see how much the organization has grown surrounded by all these current members.
Joining Delta Gamma at Lawrence University has been an incredible experience for me. If it wasn’t for this I would never have learned all these important skills as I did last weekend. Although the trip was a long one, I was able to have such a good time with some of my best friends, and learn some amazing things from inspiring women. I am so thankful to have had an opportunity like this one.