It was during my third fellowship when I realized I wanted to get involved at a higher level within Alpha Phi Omega in the Beta Theta Chapter at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The opportunity first arose during one of our pledge meetings in the semester when the Vice Presidents of Pledge Education discussed the different positions open for pledges to take on. The president position grasped my attention immediately, and my friend Anna decided to nominate me for the position.

I first met Anna through choir at our university. We decided to rush together after determining we were both interested in pledging for Alpha Phi Omega. Along the way, we became great friends and it's a great joy to share my pledging experience with her. I was very thankful when she nominated me for pledge president because I asked her if it was a good idea to run and she supported me through the entire process. I love volunteering with her and I can't wait to share more experiences with her.

While running, my pitch included talking about creating culture. I wrote about how communities and people within them rely on culture to spread ideas and the concept of family.

These two concepts, culture and family, have delivered success in my student career. I first learned about curating a culture in high school when my band director directed me towards a TED Talk with Dan Pink and the power of motivation. I learned that incentives, especially high ones, lead to poorer performance. With this in mind, my band director, Michael Pavlik, instructed me on the importance of culture and how within a band and other music ensembles it's important to establish a bond between members because this is ultimately lead to better performance throughout our music careers.

This advice I learned stuck with me and I soon realized I could apply this outside of a music setting quite easily. When I informed my fellow pledge colleagues about the importance of culture, I grew nervous as the election poll officially went live. I didn't want my colleagues to think I was too above and beyond, or feel like I didn't know what I was talking about. I am very confident in what I do and I believe the other pledges know this, so when the position was appointed to me, I knew my friends had listened to my advice on creating culture.

I love meeting new people whenever I volunteer. Becoming pledge president has made me appreciate the role and gives more meaning to volunteering. At a food pantry, my friend Harley and I made joke worthy pictures of artichoke as nobody would take them because they "don't know how to cook them." We ended the long night with this picture of us and now I have a great memory of not only volunteering but of making new friends.