Autumn is upon us; the leaves are changing, the weather is finally mellowing out, and we can actually wear our light cardigans without roasting alive. The music I listen to tends to reflect the changing conditions, and one of my favorite groups (especially around this time of year) is a British alternative-folk group by the name of Mumford & Sons. With their earthy sound and thought-provoking lyrics, there is nothing like taking the long drive home into the foothills of the East Tennessee mountains fully engulfed in the sights, sounds and smells of Autumn.
Among my favorite songs, their first single "Little Lion Man" is one of those that really speaks to me. With lyrics like "Rate yourself and rake (originally this was "rape") yourself and take all the courage you have left, and waste it on fixing all the problems that you made in your own head," "Tremble little lion man, you'll never settle any of your scores," "I really f**cked it up this time, didn't I my dear?" and "Your grace is wasted in your face, your boldness stands alone among the wreck," this song is a scathing self-evaluation, and the verdict is quite clear.
As an introvert, I tend to be very self-reflective not only of my experiences, but of myself. Now sometimes you have good days- good days are wonderful and fantastic, phenomenal even- but bad days are just as frequent. But the thing about introverts is that, if we're not careful, we can have a tendency to take the alone time that we need to recharge and essentially become hermits, which makes everything absolutely horrible. Let me give you a simple equation to try and explain the point I'm trying to make; (bad experience * self-reflection criticism) ^ hermit-like behavior = despondence. Granted, everyone has days like these; but when you're in a hermit-like state when these feelings hit, it leads to a downward spiral of self-loathing that feeds upon itself and only leads to more self-loathing and beating yourself up over the tiny details. Having struggled with this myself, I speak from years of experience.
Enter my acceptance letter to MTSU literally ONE DAY after my 18th birthday, and the promise of a new life emerged; a life free from the expectations of the life I had set for myself up to that point and the burdens therein. A life that I could (and would) quite literally start from scratch, where I would form myself into the version of myself that I wanted to be.
A life where I would no longer be forced to live under the weight of the "Little Lion Men" in my head.
Something else that came with my new territory was exploring new opportunities presented to me, and one of those was joining a fraternity. I’ll be honest, I never thought I would join a fraternity. With so much bad press and stereotypes surrounding Greek life, it seemed like it was enough to keep me away. At least, until I started exploring and eventually joined ΛΧΑ (Lambda Chi Alpha).
For those of you who have not experienced the tabling aspect of Greek recruitment, let me try to explain. During recruitment, existing fraternities and sororities look to expand their presence and memberships by trying to- you guessed it- recruit students into joining them, and new Greek organizations look to find founding members, or “Founding Fathers.” One particular aspect of recruitment that I’m referring to is called “tabling,” which consists of members of the organization sitting at tables and trying to get people interested in joining… It’s fairly self-explanatory. This was my introduction to Lambda Chi, which was (and still is) brand new to campus, and I immediately wanted to learn more. I waited a while (approximately 24 hours) to see if they would contact me and schedule a time when they could sit down with me and give me more information about the fraternity. Quite unsatisfied with the lack of response, I decided to email them myself. We then worked out a time to sit down and talk, and they gave me the information for some small events- such as a Cards Against Humanity and going out to Buffalo Wild Wings- where I would be able to meet other potential new members and get a feel for the atmosphere we would set for the new fraternity.
Eager to dive in head first, I went to the first event they told me about. I loved it so much, I went to every single event for two weeks straight.
One thing you should know about Lambda Chi is that we place very heavy emphasis on the respect of our new members, abolishing the pledge system (which is what typically leads to a lot of the hazing that occurs) in the 1970's and replacing it with Associate Membership, which gives new members the same rights (such as wearing letters and holding offices) as established members, except being referred to as a “Brother.”
Something else I'd like to mention about Lambda Chi, at least in the context of this article, is our mascot; a Lion Rampant. I won’t go into much detail about the symbolism and significance, but you can find all the information I’ve presented here on Lambda Chi’s Wikipedia page. Taking that into consideration, I like to think of the men (myself included in my fraternity as “Lion Men," since we stand for the bigger organization that (in this case) is being represented by the Lion Rampant.
As I mentioned before, when I came to Middle Tennessee State I was trying to get myself out from under the weight of the life I had built for myself, one full of self-doubt and the knowledge that I was to blame for all of my mistakes. Looking back, I realize that there have always been people routing for me, but so often those voices are drowned out by the personal demons we have on our backs. Ever since I began this incredible leg of my journey, I have been met with nothing but encouragement and support, especially from my soon-to-be brothers. And that’s really why I decided to try and join a fraternity, for brotherhood- not only knowing that someone is there to have your back, but so you can be there for someone else. My brothers have helped pull me out of the darkness of my past and have helped me learn not to take myself so seriously. In so doing, they’ve helped me learn how to get over my “Little Lion Men.”
But most importantly, they’ve taught me how to roar.
