Posts tagged APO

Maybe I’ll regret the post title since it could probably go with a much cooler story than what follows, but I’m finna tell it anyway. Besides, I can always recycle titles, right?

This summer I’ve been updating information for my fraternity’s chapter databases and contact lists, then last week tinkered with fonts and colors on our backup website. Really soon I’m hoping to see some of the most drastic changes in 3 years to our main site by giving it a facelift and reorganizing pages. I’ve already made a few formatting changes to a couple pages. One thing later led to another in my curious browsing (brute-forcing?) and I found literally a treasure trove of photos from pledge classes long past—before Facebook. I want to add these to our chapter blog or Facebook page, or both, in addition to some old class roster pics that don’t see the virtual light of day much nowadays. It would definitely help bridge the history/ knowledge gap of the last few years—and who knows, maybe even bring a some elusive alumni out of the shadows and wanting to be part of APO again (it’s a stretch, but I’m still hopeful).

Not gonna lie: looking at the pictures, it seems our chapter was way more fun, inclusive, and meaningful than now. Don’t mean to sound pessimistic or discount what’s currently good. Yeah, yeah, spare me all that simplistic jazz about “[APO] is what you make of it.” Anyway, perhaps we can have that type of fun reputation/appearance again someday, not for my sake but for future APO brothers. Oh yeah and they took A LOT of pictures to thoroughly document what looked like awesome times. I’ll probably share links soon.

More updates to come in my efforts to retrieve and consolidate pieces of chapter activity/alumni history, renovating our site, and improving efficiency overall.

• I thought I finished with midterms, but turns out I have a midterm for Hindi-Urdu on Friday that I just found out about this week; I’m not ready for it.
• I went back to work at Bcafe this weekend—for 3 nights in a row. But I couldn’t come in on Tuesday because I was feeling really ill/uneasy—probably due to my messed up sleep cycle from ending work at 2am, getting to bed ‘round 3, then waking up and going to my 8am SPACE internship workgroup meeting the next morning
• I have my first site for SPACE Thursday (tomorrow…today?). Bring on the new world. Also, I have to start working on our final project with my assigned intern group.
• For SPCN Kali, I have a fight scene choreography to have made by Thursday, but my partners and I haven’t gotten into contact yet…
• I have a paper due on Monday about intercultural dialogue and certain philosophers…have not done the regular class reading or any outside reading (required) for the assignment
• Today I powered through a lot of changes for my APO chapter website and how we do certain things (like award nominations and evaluation submissions), and added the pledges to our website user database, as well as helped some users access their officer email accounts and others dissociate themselves from them.
• There is no good reason as to why I am up at this hour

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• Met Brazilian UCLA Film/Theater international student named Alex while waiting for the LAX shuttle. Cool to meet a Portuguese speaker, though he was fluent in English since he attended a British school in Brazil
• Plane ride was fast; but waiting at the airport for 9am flight wasn’t pleasant
• Touch down in SFO, took BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) straight to Berkeley with only one in-station transfer
• BART is very convenient and relatively speedy, but it makes this eerie screaming sound while underground. Also, ticket system was different from what I expected, since New York subway charges flat rate per trip; BART charges by distance

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If all goes to plan, in less than 12 hours I will have flown in to San Francisco to grace the Bay Area with my awesomeness haha jk. I’m going to the 3-day Alpha Phi Omega, Region X (ten) Conference (“Regionals”) in Berkeley, co-hosted by the Stanford and UC Berkeley chapters. I’m going to stay with a Brother from another chapter.

Other than a brief visit to the Stanford campus during a northern and central California college tour/field trip in junior year of high school, I’ve never been to the Bay Area, so I guess you can say I’m quite stoked. I’m expecting a slightly different vibe from LA, but I’ll see how it goes. I definitely plan on taking the chance to explore during my free time, and I hope to meet and potentially network with others Brothers from throughout California. I just finished packing what I hope will be adequate. After eating an epic-looking meal being cooked by my roommates at this moment, I want to get to bed and wake up early. I must take the FlyAway shuttle to LAX by 7am to check in to my 9am flight on time. *crossed fingers*.

I didn’t get around to posting about the rest of the past week, but in due time, probably when I get back. I’m getting tired again :O

Peace

A bit of a negative and constant reminder from 2011 is that when I ran (all alone) for Administrative VP for my APO chapter, I had said I wanted to implement a blog or at least some kind of consistent e-newsletter (ok, I did say blog) for our chapter to be able to read worthy stories of events and spotlights on individuals, and possibly a cartoon/web-comic if there were any takers…

None of that has happened since I said that in the late spring (7 months ago). Of this I am greatly ashamed. The most I did was build a basic structure for a blog on the Blogger platform, but none of the aforementioned stories were ever written. I could say it was a combination of things, such as busy schedule, taking care of other aspects of the job, and not getting my committee members assigned to me as soon as I thought—but really when it comes down to it, it is ultimately my fault. All the while, concerning my website management responsibilities, I had no PHP or SQL experience (the scripting/programming languages used by our website and database) to make any but the most basic edits, which made me and the chapter almost totally reliant on our already heavily worked Web Admin Committee, whose number of dedicated workers fluctuates since they are all either Alumni or less active members with busy schedules. Even with the summer to myself, I had neither implemented the blog nor personally contributed to the website.

I suppose that doesn’t count as a real confession since the result—or lack thereof—of all this has been apparent to everyone who heard me make that objective for the term. I guess the confession would be that even though I really wanted and needed help, I didn’t ask—partially out of shame and reluctance to bother others, and largely from lack of commitment of time and effort. In that regard, I feel like I’ve let my chapter down.

I’ll write more about this in a future post.

I didn’t get a Lil’ Bro/Sis for APO. I didn’t even have to read the whole email to know it; the first line always gives it away in these rejection letters. Even though there were more active members seeking to pick up a Lil than there were pledges available, I thought I had a decent chance at it, since some of the actives already had Lils and I thought I made convincing cases for the pledges I did write about. Well, I’m not going to dwell much more on this and try to explain why this happened or why it should/shouldn’t have. The end result doesn’t change, and I can only accept it. The moment is dead and gone. So it goes. On to the next one.

At least now I don’t have to spend money on anyone in APO other than Number One.

Now, time to go do some P-90X with some of my bros.

• my midterm today
• my other midterm today
• both could’ve gone a little better, but I will take it as is, a good sign

Now just looking forward to some contemplation mañana about picking up a Little Brother or Sister and filling out the application from the pledge parents soon if that’s the choice I make. Also maybe gonna try to have lunch with a someone, we’ll see. I’ll likely be going home on Saturday, since my uncle seems to miss me, and it’s been over a month since I’ve seen my relatives (last year I’d go entire quarters without going home, until winter or summer breaks).