[KAPital PHINUst]

I learned in several phases:

Pre-college: I was first exposed to Greek life back in 1985 when I was one of many middle school scholars sponsored by the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. At about the same time, I saw Revenge of the Nerds for the first time and between the Pi Delta Pis and the AKA, they obviously were different as night and day. I was an AKA scholar again in 1986 which was a repeat of the prior year--I still have the original certificate to this very day--and presented it to the membership when I spoke at their Founders Day earlier this year. But I digress.

My next exposure was in 1990 as a high school student visiting OSU and some of my now frat brothers put on a brief exhibition step show for us. Funny thing was, I didn't know them by name, I just remembered the canes being used.

My final pre-college exposure was in the spring of 1991 when I was invited to a Delta Sigma Theta Scholarship Reception where we had to write an essay on why we was best qualified to get a scholarship--and we were given only 24 hours to complete and hand deliver it to the scholarship coordinator's house. Quite an experience.

Oh, and the summer before I went off to college, I got a pamphlet mailed to me inviting me to rush one of the fraternitites from the campus' IFC. I promptly discarded the pamphlet; I had a very jaded view of Greeks--my attitude was that I wasn't about to be running around some frat house with bing cherries jammed in my butt trying to drop it in a martini glass or some mess like that.

College: My first exposure at college was seeing the Black Greeks stroll
at the Alpha Phi Alpha icebreaker at the local skating rink, which all I remember was that it took over an hour before they let anybody in the place, and that the bathrooms smelled like yesterday's piss.

But as the first semester pressed on, I found out that the Black Greeks had gotten a lot of clout, in that they sponsored a lot of black student oriented events, and they strolled at parties. Now anyone who knew me in college (and even now) knows that I LOVE a good party!!

So I decided to research Greek life, and I went to the source. Yup, Baird's manual and read it virtually cover to cover. And because this was pre-internet, I researched the old fashioned way--using books, magazine articles and newspaper articles. I have archived in my Alpha Phi Omega pledge book clippings and copies of numerous Greek oriented articles and commentaries from a variety of sources. My other book I hold in high regard as far as research was From Here To Fraternity by Robert Egan. Great book, lots of stuff I learned about (like one-handed boilermakers and how to megachug a beer).

Of course, I also learned about Greek life by talking and inquiring to others as well. Lotsa good discussions.

Then in 1995, I lost my internet virginity and began researching electronically. It changed my horizon of Greek (and other) research from wide screen to VistaVision. Even then though, the internet was still in its relative infancy (who remembers when sites were in gopher format)?

Then the Greek message board system came about with sites such as stepshow.com and meetgreeks.com and even the original version of this site: Greeksource.com. But in my 15 years of Greekdom, I have learned a lot and still learning more each and every day.