For my first blog, I thought that I would start off by telling exactly how I came to become a brother of Lambda Chi Alpha and how my time in the Fraternity thus far has impacted me.

I grew up in Talladega, Alabama (home to the internationally famous Talladega Superspeedway). All throughout my school days, especially during junior high and high school, I was looked down upon and sharply criticized for the way that I carried myself. You see, I was a person who was very, very much “mature” for his age (and pretty much still am in a way). Because of this, my fellow classmates, who were mostly people that did not have the high positive drive and aspirations in life as I did, viewed me as a person who they thought thought was better than they were and had a “holier than thou” attitude about him. The reality of the situation was that I did not ever think that I was better than anyone else. Because of my high level of maturity at such a young age, my classmates thought of me as pompous, snot-noised, and egotistical. No matter how hard I tried to reach out to my classmates and to be their friend, they would never let me so much as even try to hang out with them. The treatment that I was getting from my classmates was saddening. When it came time for me to graduate from Talldega High School and to go off to college, my main goal was to have a fresh new start.

I started as a freshman at the University of Montevallo, a small public liberal arts university in Montevallo, Alabama, during the Fall 2003 semester. As I said, I wanted to start anew at Montevallo. It would be during my first semester at Montevallo that I would come in contact with a group of guys that would finally give me that place of belonging and a feeling of being loved and called “friend.” That group was the Sigma-Epsilon Zeta of Lambda Chi Alpha.

From the first day of me meeting the brothers and going through my associate membership, I saw a spirit of brotherhood in Lambda Chi Alpha that I knew would remain with me for the remainder of my life. The brothers of Lambda Chi Alpha were the first (and only) Greeks of the UM Greeks system to show me the true meaning of friendship and brotherhood, letting me know that I was indeed a person that was loved and accepted and that I no longer had to worry about being the “outcast” by and from the rest.

Because of the great spirit of brotherhood and fellowship that I have experienced, Lambda Chi Alpha has helped make me be a better and more self-confident man and I have no doubt that that feeling will ever go away. I am greatly indebted to Lambda Chi Alpha, a great brotherly Bond, for finally giving me that place to belong and for blessing me with an extended family that I will always cherish and work hard for.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 15th, 2005 at 4:05 pm and is filed under Mentoring . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.