Wednesday, August 31, 2011

SO I decided for creative purposes, I'm moving Next Step over here:

http://ashmactakesontheworld.tumblr.com/

Enjoy!

My first attempt at photojournalism

I'm taking a lot of hands on classes, one being photojournalism. I was very intimidated going into this class. I thought it was all about taking pictures of things we liked, but then when class started, our teacher started takign about all these concepts that I never heard of before.
For our first assignment, we had to take photos using 7 different concept. Of course I still had my sorority bs to deal with so I didn't start this project until 4 hours before it was due. I walked around campus to see what I could find and they didn't turn out half bad. Check it out:








Sunday, August 21, 2011

Necessary Evils: Recruitment Week

I've been absent for quite sometime and not because I wanted to, but I because I had to. There are somethings in life that I refer to "necessary evils." Since being back in the states, my life has been full of them. I thought that starting a new job would be the worst of them, but I was wrong. I'll give you two words.

Sorority. Recruitment.

If you want 50 girls to tell you how awesome you are and blow sunshine up your ass, go through sorority recruitment. This week filled with songs, parties and never-ending questions like, "what's your major?" and it gets really old really fast. Especially for the person who has to organize it all, which of course was me.

If I knew what I was getting into beforehand, I would have run as fast as I could away from it all. I wasn't originally supposed to have the VP Recruitment job. While I was in Spain, the original VP, to put it nicely, went crazy and got kicked out of the sorority. Her replacement wasn't that great and ended up not making the grade requirement (you need a 2.75 gpa, so it's not like it's hard). So out of all the other girls in the house, I was the only who met the three requirements.

1. Live in the Sorority House
2. Make the grade requirements.
3. Have gone through both sides of recruitment.

Lucky me.

My biggest obstacle that I had to overcome was my lack of attention to details. I'm more of a big-picture kind of girl. Recruitment is like on big party and I had to be the party planner. Caring about what color of napkins to use, decorations to hang and painting the scenery for skits was just a little too much for me. I kept asking myself, "What damn difference does this all make?"

You see, our chapter has a big problem with retention. We'll start off the school year with some great girls then as the year goes on, girls start to realize that this isn't something they wanted or they felt mislead by what was said to them during recruitment. We spend so much time practicing songs and worrying about "how cute the house looks" but if the girls don't stay around, what's the point in all of it.

I feel that this was a test from God to see how strong I could be. It was an incredibly stressful eight days. Half way through I caught a cold and barely had a voice. Before the first day I startd to cry becasue I was so frustrated and I felt like I was failing. Then pulled myself together and remembered one of my leadership principles:

Don't cry over something that won't cry over you.

In the end, it wasn't going to matter how things looked, but as long as we got great girls. Fortunately things did work out. We made quota for the first time in years and the girls who have joined the house are pretty bad-ass. Now that the hard part of my job is over, I can focus on more important things.

On a side note, tomorrow is the first day of school!!