Many may only see collegiate Greek life as a social group who hides their partying behind community service hours and charitable donations regarding τελευταια νεα. However, I wish to challenge that stereotype by focusing on the professional development and self-improvement opportunity that is presented to Greek life members - especially those that hold leadership positions. Currently, I serve my one-hundred member sorority as chapter president and assist other officers to steadfastly keep up a well-balanced, structured, and involved organization.

Fraternities and sororities must operate as a business first, and a socialite second to be able to be successful. I would really like to indicate some key concepts that show the relation between Greek organizations and businesses.

Greek organizations:
• Divide officers into teams to work on specific regions of the chapter
• Must operate on a strict budget, fueled solely from member's dues
• Must market themselves well in order to continue steadily to recruit new members
• Have mission statements and values to hold their members to and gear their brand
• Must follow rules from, and are accountable to, their national headquarters
• Have insurance to cover their organization and its members, as well as many policies and procedures in place for holding events

They are just a couple of points that show how Greek organizations are ran as the ultimate business, combining friendship with professionalism and offering members a good opportunity for personal development.

As president, I see all sides of managing a Greek organization and must help every officer no matter what team her position is really a part of. My days are filled up with constantly making decisions and weighing the consequences. I have learned to create fair decisions that benefit the greater good, while remaining unbiased in the process. I also reply to everyone's questions and concerns while problem solving when an unplanned event takes place. For example, we'd a small crisis with flyers that were made to market an event we were having. If they came in, we noticed the contact email on the flyers was spelled wrong. After some deliberation, we made a decision to use the flyers we had and made a fresh email address with the typo included.

A huge element of managing a successful organization works well and professional communication. Our main forum of communication between officers and the advisory board is emailing. I have learned how exactly to properly send and respond to emails in a specialist manner. My communication skills have improved substantially since being fully a leader of my chapter. I have learned to communicate concisely and format information in the most effective way. I have discovered providing information in bullet lists is the better way to get members to read messages fully. Our officers must hold team meetings and get reports of progress in the different areas on the team. Officers are accountable for organizing their very own meetings and taking minutes to record the thing that was discussed. Greek organizations teach members to effectively and professionally communicate through emailing, holding meetings, and dealing with others.

One of the most valuable traits that I'm still learning through my presidency, is how to get more comfortable with hard conversations. I work closely with your Director of Standards and Ethics to ensure our members are holding themselves to the high ideals and values. If someone is falling behind, it's our job to have conversations together about why this really is happening and what we can do to make sure it doesn't happen again. These tough conversations become even tougher when remembering that the members of our chapter will also be our friends and sisters. As a leader of a Greek organization, I'm learning to have these hard conversations while remaining in control of myself and the conversation.

Greek life has so much more to offer compared to the social part of the corporation, and can truly prepare young adults to become listed on the professional world. Through developing members personally, and developing officers professionally, Greek organizations could possibly offer life-changing collegiate experiences that can't be found elsewhere.