Write Your Story Now

by Haley Cahill-Teubert

Can we all agree life is weird and chaotic right now? When the governor of my state issued a shelter-in-place order, and I caught myself thinking: “Wow, I never imagined something like this would happen in my lifetime.”

We’re facing some difficult times and navigating uncharted waters, my friends. And whether we realize it or not, the choices we make every day in this unusual time and the way we face this pandemic will become the story we tell for years to come. Let’s not wait until this is all said and done to start crafting that story.

I don’t know about you, but I do not want my story to be about how I was part of a stampede to get toilet paper or how I watched 36 straight hours of Netflix before moving from the couch.

No shame if that’s you, but I think we all want to be able to tell a better story. Let me explain what I mean.

You know those cards you get around the holidays from family friends with these lengthy letters about everyone’s year in review–usually written in story form? They tend to be a highlight reel of all the accomplishments of the year, but they sometimes include challenges someone overcame.

At the end of this odd season of life, we are going to have a story to tell about how we persevered and how we social distanced, but instead of waiting for it to all pass, I want us to craft that ideal story now because that gives us a blueprint of how we want to come out of all of this. It gives us a clear plan for our next steps. It causes us to be more intentional with our time away from work or school.

For our organizations to come out of this stronger, I believe we need to start crafting the story now of how we were together during a time when we couldn’t be together.

When you think about the story your chapter or organization is crafting, let these questions guide your next steps:

• How did your chapter make you feel safe and cared for during a time of crisis?
• How did your chapter create spaces for connection and conversation in a new format?
• What did your chapter do to continue providing value to you when you weren’t on campus or in a chapter facility?
• What did members of your chapter do to make social distancing feel less isolating?
• What decisions did your chapter make to help members in the community?
• How did your chapter work to ensure academic success of members when education environments changed?
• What did you do to positively impact a member(s) of your chapter?
• What impact did your members have on their respective communities during this time?
• How were your members Socially Excellent?

I could list a million more questions, but I believe this is a solid starting point. Your answers to these questions will become the story you tell when coronavirus no longer commands headlines.

Once we can determine what story we want to tell to PNMs when they ask in recruitment, to parents who question the value of Greek organizations, to non-Greek students who aren’t sure what Greek life has to offer, to our own members who want to know why Greek life still matters when no one is on campus, I think we will have a clear action plan of how we move forward through the rest of the academic year, into summer break, and on to the fall.

In a time of uncertainty, you may be unsure how to move forward or how to pass the hours of your day in a more meaningful way. If that’s how you feel, consider that holiday card story. Write what you believe would be the ideal story of how your chapter and your organization survived a pandemic using the questions above–the story you’d be proud to look back on and share at the end of the year. The story you develop is your blueprint–the blueprint that will tell the story of how our brothers and sisters were together we couldn’t be “together”.