life at eiu

Well hello again! Let me say that it is nice to be able to share with you all my story and I hope that you’re getting an idea for what Eastern means to its students. That being said, let’s take a look at Dan Rolando’s life in the past month.

If you recall in my last blog, I was up for election for EIU’s Homecoming King. Well the very next day after writing that I was crowned the EIU Homecoming King for 2008, and by was I surprised/excited! Basically, it meant that I had to rearrange my entire weekly schedule to be able to attend all of the week’s homecoming events. There was the coronation on Monday, the faculty-student basketball game on Tuesday, family fun night on Wednesday in the Grand Ballroom, Yell Like Hell on Thursday, the school-wide pep rally on Friday, and the week culminated in the Homecoming parade and football game on Saturday. That was all on top of my schoolwork which really started piling up that week.

I made it through that week a little bit shaken, but not stirred up (haha, get it…). I had the opportunity to have a luncheon with President William Perry and Dr. Joya Mukergee, a worker for a company called Partners in Health that does a great deal of outreach medicine in poverty-stricken nations, especially focusing on Tuberculosis and AIDS. She shared her fascinating story of growing up in New York, but being so affected by her trip to an impoverished India as a child that she knew her calling to be helping the poor and downtrodden. It inspired me to try to begin finding what my passion is, something that I can pursue the rest of my life.

In the most recent news of my life, my fraternity, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, just recently had its elections, and I was elected the next President of the fraternity. It is a huge honor, but will also be a big responsibility with chartering coming up in the spring and everything to get set up with that. I will at least have a month or so to prepare for the transition, but that is going to be a big part of my responsibilities from now until my term ends next fall.

The last cool thing I have to talk about is the fact that my brother is getting married in less than two weeks, and I am the best man. That means that I will be very busy in the next couple of weeks finalizing bachelor party plans, getting tux pick-ups coordinated, and thinking about how I want to embarrass my brother in my toast. All in all, it has been an extremely busy month for me, but I wouldn’t have it any other way! Part of the reason I chose EIU was so that I could really get the full college experience of being involved around campus. I think it’s almost as important to grow as a person and find where you want to go in life as it is to get by in classes and earn your degree, and Eastern Illinois University has a perfect atmosphere to allow you to do just that.