My college fraternity put me in its hall of fame. I struggled to understand why.
When I was first contacted last year about the possibility of being inducted into the Hall of Fame for the chapter of the fraternity I belonged to in college, I scratched my head.
Then I started looking around the room for hidden cameras.
I tried to rationalize. Maybe they made a typo. Right? Like, maybe they meant to write, “We’re excited to share with you the news that you have been nominated for induction into our Hall of SHAME,” and then, well, you know, auto-correct got involved. There just didn’t seem to be any other explanation.
Sure, when I think back to my involvement with the Gamma-Rho Chapter of the Kappa Sigma Fraternity at the University of Arizona, I recall so many warm memories of so many epic hangs. But it doesn’t take long for my mind to drift to immature-jerk behavior that I’m not proud of — when I made promises I either didn’t keep or never intended to honor from the start, or threw a tantrum over something that definitely didn’t warrant a tantrum, or otherwise acted in a way that just-plain ticked people off.
I was good at being bad, despite the much-better efforts of those individuals who were genuinely looking out for my best interests.
Actually, maybe “good at it” is an understatement.
One could also pretty easily argue that I was one of the more notorious screw-ups to ever pledge my fraternity during the first half of the 1990s. I think I must still appear somewhere fairly high on the all-time list of Pledges Kept for the Longest Time in “Holdover” Status Due to Failure to Maintain the 2.5 GPA Required for New-Member Initiation.
Granted, I did make a colossal rookie mistake, moving out of a school residence hall and into the off-campus fraternity house as a two-week-old pledge (insert fearful-face emoji here) in Fall 1991, still several days shy of my 18th birthday.
That was kind of like jumping into a tank full of hungry tiger sharks wearing a jacket made of raw steak.
Or a lot like being a kid in a candy store, except the kid was a college freshman, living 2,500 miles away from home, in desperate need of new friends, incredibly susceptible to peer pressure; the store was the fraternity house; and the candy was alcohol and cigarettes.
In any event, when I got my first set of grades that December, my semester GPA started with the numeral “1.”
It took me a full year to earn enough As and Bs to move up into the acceptable range.
And Lord, was that a humiliating year, watching my pledge brothers become “actives” and then not one but two more pledge classes coming in while I hung in limbo-for-losers. Finally, sometime shortly after Christmas Break, in January 1993, more than 15 months after pledging, I was made a full-fledged member of my fraternity.
In no universe would anyone have expected, at that point, that someday I might wind up being honored by the fraternity for “outstanding achievements,” for having “risen to a position of great respect.”
But there I found myself earlier this month, giving an acceptance speech in front of 200-ish people inside Arizona’s football stadium.
I talked that night about the things I’ve talked about here, laying my flaws and foibles on the podium, scratching my head and admitting that I wasn’t quite sure why or how this had happened.
I joked that I was like John Belushi’s John “Bluto” Blutarsky, who famously had a 0.0 GPA after seven years at Faber College in “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” the main differences being I was scrawny, Asian and not nearly as hilarious. I spoke of wrestling with demons like insecurity and low self-esteem and a chip on my shoulder, alluded to how I needed more time than perhaps others when it came to developing qualities like maturity and commitment and resilience, tried to show gratitude to those in attendance who had tried to help me succeed even though I looked by most metrics like a shoo-in for failure.
I explained how, another 15 months after my 15-month run as a pledge, I was making plans to spend a summer in our nation’s capital as an intern at a newspaper you may have heard of called The Washington Post — a feat I repeated in 1996, before being hired there as a full-time editor in 1997.
Then I said something like, “And the rest is history.”
Which makes it sound as if it was all smooth sailing after that. Which it has certainly not been.
Career-wise I’ve done well enough for myself. I’m proud of my résumé as a professional. I’m that rare person who actually really enjoys the work they do.
This whole fraternity-Hall-of-Fame thing, however, led to a lot of self-reflection. Not just about my legacy as an individual in the eyes of this organization that had a role in shaping me back when I was so young and so impressionable; but also about my legacy as an individual in the eyes of my friends and family.
And what I’ll say is this: When I think back on my personal life, I recall so many warm memories of so many good times — vacations, staycations, birthday parties, dinner parties, holiday gatherings, marathons and triathlons, movie nights, game nights, quiet nights at home, and everything in between.
It doesn’t take long, however, to start also recalling ways I’ve treated loved ones that I’m ashamed of — when I let down someone I love, by breaking a promise, or violating trust, or behaving in some other way that just wasn’t very becoming.
More times than I’d like to admit, I have demonstrated as a grown-up that I can still act like a child.
But I’ve also worked hard, especially in recent years, to try to earn enough As and Bs, so to speak, to get up into the acceptable range as a husband, father, son, brother, and friend.
I might never be a Hall of Famer in any of those categories.
Then again, my fraternity’s decision to honor me made me realize that you just can’t predict how you’ll ultimately be perceived by others.
That, probably more often than I would guess, the people around me are rooting for me. That even if there are some who are not — who don’t think I deserve compassion, kindness, or forgiveness — I should still give myself some grace. That my screw-ups, flaws and failures might haunt me, but that they only define me if I let them.
And that being able to laugh at myself and being able to recognize those imperfections is, just maybe, a sign of some actual maturity.
Of course, having said all of this — if “inducting me into the Hall of Fame” was just an elaborate fraternity prank? Someone’s getting an eyebrow shaved off…
