When you go to college you don’t think about teenagers/early twenties students running branches of national organizations, attending conferences, putting on events that cost thousands of dollars and more. Yet in my experience that is the responsibility and opportunities available to students in college and at UPS. We’re representatives of our university, clubs, honor societies, departments, labs, fraternities and sororities and more all connected through a national network. We have opportunities to be national leaders for our respective organizations, regional representatives, and sit on communities representing our peers to professors, deans, professionals and more.

I’m constantly in awe when I think of my experience in my sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta. We’re at a small university and still our executive team, for some its their first time in a leadership position and even so its a role that is very different than limited high school responsibilities. We handle thousands of dollars putting on our philanthropy and formal for over 100 people, we coordinate events with other houses and community organizations to do fun activities and service projects. Many other campus organizations do the same, some planning rallies, and workshops!

Even the opportunity to live off-campus, we as students have to find roommates/housemates, reach out to landlords, set up our utilities with various companies and preferences. We furnish our own homes for a few months to a few years during our time year, choosing to live off-campus, walk or drive to campus and begin to stop relying on the campus meal plan but rather cooking (or trying to cook) for ourselves. These are all valuable experiences heading off on our own whether its a graduate program where we must find our own living situation, even finding a job in a different field than we expected to pay the bills.