Quote:
Originally posted by SmartBlondeGPhB
Speed no, but an inability to say no sometimes. When it's something you enoy, often you don't notice how much you're doing.
What happens is usually one of two things:
1) They do nothing else but live, and breath their GLO (been there, did that for a few years).
2) They don't necessarily do as good a job as someone else with more time would have done and something suffers.
And before anyone jumps down my throat and tells me I'm insulting someone, I have direct experience with both.......
I have found that it's common for higher ups to not pay attention to what a woman is already doing before they offer her something else. And when a higher up asks, it's hard to say no.
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I definitely don't think you are insulting me if that is what you are referring to. I think there are definitely women out there who fall into the second category, and it bothers me. I think I do a very good job with my advising positions, at our regional conference last month I won the award for best Chapter Adviser and Bentley won for best formal recruitment, which I definitely take some credit for since I was their Recruitment Adviser for two years before becoming their CA last year, and I was very very involved with their rush this year (of course, I also had a very motivated chapter and a wonderful VP Recruitment to work with). As for Tufts, I don't think I did as good of a job because I was focusing on Bentley so much (I hate how rush falls near the same time for every chapter around here!), but it was my first year at the school and I had a lot of learning to do about all the weird things they do like guaranteed bidding. I relied on their CA a lot, but we had a good system going. I feel I made some positive changes, and hopefully things will continue to go well in the future.
As for my alum position, I really took it because no one else will. I definitely don't think I do a very good job, but I figure it's better to have me doing something than no one doing anything at all. This is one area that I definitely can't say no. I was the president for one year because no one else was interested, and last night I was elected VP Programming again because no one else wanted it. All our leadership right now is in the collegiate chapters, it's where everyone would rather be at the moment. We are getting better in my AC, but it's a much slower process changing that than changing our collegiate chapters.
I guess I do fall into the first category, I do live and breath Alpha Phi. I have since I graduated college 5 years ago, and I hope to continue. I know some people may think it's weird or don't understand, but I don't really mind. It's truly what I love to do. I haven't found a profession that interests me (outside of maybe being a mother-due in 5 weeks!), and I'm lucky that my husband makes enough so that I can stay home and that he'd prefer me to. But one thing I've noticed is that no one is ever asking me to do more. It's more me offering to do more. Sometimes I regret it (I was rather upset at myself for volunteering to help Tufts last December), but usually by the end I'm very happy that I did. This semester especially has probably been the most rewarding ever. Bentley seems so happy to have me working with them (and they cried over both awards), and Tufts made me this huge thank you basket full of stuff for helping them with rush. So that makes it even more worth while.
I also feel that since I now have all these skills with rush and in other areas, I should be giving back and using them as much as I can. I joined Alpha Phi at a very hard point in my life, and it was the one thing besides my husband that kept me sane and helped me survive and actually slightly enjoy college. I will never forget that, and I want to do my part to make sure we can be there for other sisters in the same way in the future. I'm hardly perfect at what I do, but I try very hard and enjoy it all.
I think this is my biggest post ever on GC!