The Student Leader Blog

Ask and Ye Shall Receive: a not-so-novel approach to recruitment

I've never been good at remembering expressions or using them appropriately (e.g. "don't put the cart before the horse," or "don't put all your eggs in one basket"). I'll inevitably screw them up somehow and very confidently say something like "don't put all your eggs before the horse."  Well, there's an expression that I should have tried out earlier than later that goes something like "ask and ye shall receive, seek and ya shall find."

It worked for the Bible (or at least so I hear) and it works for recruitment, as evidenced by the fact that this blog has gone from have 2 writers to 6 (soon to be 7) in a little over a week. What was my technique? I started seeking out promising students on Facebook (by looking for student government groups) and asking the leaders to write for the blog (until Facebook accused me of spamming), I sent a mass email to all student leaders at my own college, and I basically started telling everyone I could think of that I was recruiting for the blog. It was the mouse technique that I scoffed at in my last recruitment post, and apparently it works! All this time, I had been focusing on convincing a few people I knew to write and totally forgetting about the many amazing people that I had not met or thought of yet.

The other thing I've learned (or perhaps re-learned because I have a sneaking suspicion that I had already smacked myself on the forehead for this) is that you never know who will be right for your organization. For example, Steve DeSiena (sorry to point you out, Steve), is a perfect fit for this blog, but I honestly never thought to ask him directly because I figured that he was too busy and too funny to want to get involved. The forehead smack came when he responded to a mass email I sent, saying that he was interested AND knew someone else who'd be a good fit (Mike Sharp - who is a perfect addition).

The moral of this blog:
You never know who will hatch out of which egg, so put all the eggs into the basket, stick the basket in the cart, and get the horse to go asking because he'll eventually find what he's searching for. Got it?

P.S. Please welcome Nick Chapa, Steve DeSiena, Mike Sharp, and (soon to publish) Kody Tinnel!

Hey, I Think I Like America After All!

Many students, even student leaders, these days take a flippant, dismissive stance toward patriotism, myself included. I think it's a backlash against the overly patriotic middle-aged people we were all around after 9/11. These days the hyperpatriotism of our fathers has mostly died down aside from the occasional crazy conspiracy theorist who thinks the Jews or Santa Claus or every Muslim ever including Barack Hussein Obama was really behind 9/11 and that America is the only safe place in the world or whatever. Despite the relatively less patriotic scene in America these days, student pride in our country isn't nearly as high as it used to be due to the way most of the rest of the world hates us as well as the tanking economy and endless war in Iraq and everything else that has gone wrong over the last several years.

Despite the lack of patriotism usually found in students, I've noticed that there is something that has gotten most everyone excited to be an American again: the Olympics.

If Facebook statuses are any indication, most of my friends, even the ones who aren't sports fans, watch the Games as much as possible to see our best athletes kick the crap out of the rest of the world. The men's 4x100 meter freestyle relay on Sunday night was the catalyst, I think, and would have been an excellent cap to our Olympics this year had it happened later on in the Games. After the amazing comeback by Phelps and Phriends, a lot of my friends reacted with such intelligent remarks as “eat it, France” and other colorful language. I only read descriptions of the event and thought, okay, that's kinda cool I guess. I watched the race the next day on NBC.com and found myself on the edge of my seat, arms raised in triumph even though I knew what happened. Fellow SL blogger Steve and I watched Michael Phelps dominate some scrubs in some swim meet last night and I felt we really bonded as Americans. I guess what we can learn here is that it may be hip to say America blows and we should all move to Canada or France, but after watching our best beat everyone else (except the Chinese at diving and gymnastics, sheesh those folks are ridiculous), living here and enjoying it is still pretty cool.

The man responsible for renewing college students' faith in America, ladies and gentlemen.