Out of everything that has made my experience at Iowa amazing, the absolute best is the people with whom I’ve spent my free time. Around the third week of the semester, I had the pleasure of running into one of the best groups of guys I’ve met. All of them were charismatic. All were kind. There were freshman though seniors, studying all kinds of majors. Immediately, they all wanted to know everything about me and do anything they could to help my experience at school.
These guys live in a house by the river, and one Sunday they invited me and some other friends over to eat some food and hang out. We went, ate, talked, had fun and around ten o’ clock, we left, knowing that we wanted to go back the next day. The next few days, we kept going back and kept enjoying ourselves more than any of us had since arriving at Iowa. I got to know all the guys who lived in the house and all of the others who hung out with them.
That Friday, those guys invited us to dinner and then a party. It was great partying with so many people whom I actually knew. There were plenty of really nice girls, and I enjoyed talking to everyone.
After about a week of hanging out, we all decided that we could make ourselves better with a few commitments. We all agreed to study at the house for at least 5 hours a week. We ran a fundraiser there for ALS research. And all of us have participated in at least 4 (8 for the older guys) hours of community service.
I spent the last week living with these guys so we could all get to know each other better. We slept in the same room, ate, worked out, studied and hung out together virtually non-stop. We all had an awesome time, and bonded a lot. Now we know each other better than anyone, and though it may seem strange, we call each other brothers.
Yesterday I was initiated into Phi Delta Theta fraternity. After spending a few months bonding with all of my new brothers and learning about our history as a fraternity, I couldn’t be more proud to be a part of anything. We really are a family. There are over 70 of us, and I love every last one of them. I know there’s nothing I couldn’t tell or ask of them, and nothing they couldn’t tell or ask of me.
Too often, fraternities are thought of as party clubs, fitting of “Animal House” stereotypes. Some of us do party together, but we party because we’re friends; we aren’t friends because we party. Studying with the older members improves my habits and helps me finish my work. Requiring each other to complete community service work helps the community and makes every one of us better men. I have never made a better decision than to join my fraternity, and my confidence in that decision will only grow stronger over the next four years.