Sigma Chi

I nearly did not rush. I was carrying a full course load with work stacked on top of it, and a fraternity read like the exact commitment that would tip the balance from tight to unmanageable. What decided it was that I had come to Gettysburg from Kathmandu and was still watching American college life from a step outside it, and my friends were rushing anyway. I wanted to be in it rather than adjacent to it, so I went.

It turned out to be the best call I have made here. The friends I made in that house are the ones I actually have, the parties were as much fun as they were supposed to be, and somewhere in the middle of it the chapter stopped being a group I had joined and started being where I go when I am not doing anything else. Being a long way from home makes you notice the difference between people you know and people who are yours. Sigma Chi is the second one, a home away from home, and a family I picked up on the way.

Then I ended up holding the two jobs nobody campaigns for. House manager meant maintenance and safety compliance for the chapter residence, the person who gets texted first when something leaks. Treasurer means dues and the ledger for sixty members. That one came with a spreadsheet I refused to keep, so Palamedes, the dues dashboard in my projects, is what replaced it: members see what they owe and pay by card, and I stopped chasing people over text.

And it is where the honour I am proudest of came from. The Sigma Chi Foundation's Founder Daniel William Cooper Academic Scholarship is a $10,000 award, and it goes to seven people across the entire national fraternity. I am one of the seven. The thing I was worried I could not fit around my academics is the thing that recognised them.