James Parks Caldwell-Day 2

The man in the mirror is the hardest to face, or so they say. I-week is beginning to pull every string of my emotional and mental ability. As our meeting progress and we finish our first assignment, I'm realizing why Sigma Chi means so much to the active brothers. If I follow through with what they give me, I will come out next week a different man. It's both exhilirating and intimidating. However, I feel as though I can follow through with it.

When they first told us in our second week of pledgeship that we would have to go a week without talking in the fall, I almost died. Not in the literal sense, of course, but a week without talking to everyone I know? It was terrifying to me. However, as it progresses, I'm learning to appreciate it more and work on it MUCH more.

Though I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to disclose, I can tell you that tonight was thought provoking, in the simplest sense of the term. We were asked to go over every ethic, to find our morality, and to question our values. After doing so, we need to find why we believe what we do. They told us we'll be frustrated if we do it right because we should be questioning everything we believe in. It's frustrating...to say the least.

The next thing I'd like to share is, looking in a mirror can be very intimidating. Next time you get a chance, look in the bathroom mirror. Don't focus on your appearance or the large zit on your forehead, rather, try to look straight into your eyes. Find the person within, and question everything you know about him/her. This may take a while and your roommates might be a little confused as why you're staring at yourself in the mirror for twenty minutes (unless of course you're Aspen Carner, who, on average takes about four hours to apply her make-up) but it's worth it. Now for those few of you that actually do this which I doubt it will be very many because I don't actually share the link to this blog with a lot of people, be confident in who you are. Once you can look the man in the mirror in the eyes, you can be confident in your existence.

I know these thoughts are both sporadic and complicated, but if you were a Sigma Chi, you would understand exactly what I mean.