Anyone who follows me on Twitter probably knows that I haven’t been having very much fun lately.  I’m the Fundraising Chair for Alpha Phi Omega, a community service fraternity here at IUP.  I have what should be a pretty easy job description - make the fraternity money.  I had a few ideas of things I wanted to do that I feel would have been pretty successful but, unfortunately, things got mixed up along the way.

We started the semester almost broke due to poor money management from previous officers.  This meant that I had very little money to spend in order to make money.  We decided to make working security at Heinz Field events mandatory for every brother and pledge.  This meant that I not only had to be a fundraiser, I had to become an expert in scheduling and logistics.

On top of the Heinz Field requirement, we also required that brothers and pledges complete three fundraising hours for the semester.  So not only was I scheduling everyone to go to Pittsburgh to work security, I was also trying to plan other fundraising events - just so people could meet their requirements.  Of course, there were snags along the way; Heinz Field switched security firms on us, we had to go through all new training with their new company and not everyone could make it.  I was forced to try and strike a fair compromise between those who had already worked games and those who wouldn’t be able to.  Things got messy, so I played the cards I was dealt - even though they weren’t that great.

And here I am today.  I feel that I made the best out of a poor set of circumstances, yet at the same time, I’m really disappointed that I didn’t get to do a lot of the things I wanted to do.  We missed out on doing Homecoming shirts for the first time in who knows how long.  I wanted to experiment with online sales as a type of fundraiser, but again, I felt like I had to focus more on creating physical events so that people could meet our fundraising requirements.  I was bitter for a day or two, but I’ve grown to accept it as a life lesson.  Not everything is going to turn out the way I want.

So what can YOU take away from this?  We all have dreams, goals, ideas, ambitions, wishes, wants, needs - but sometimes, things don’t go the way we planned.  I’m not telling you that you’ll never hit that homerun someday, but base hits are okay, too.  Aim for the rafters, but don’t feel like a double or triple constitutes failure.

And when you strike out completely, go down swinging.