What!?!? A Blog!?!?

My initial reaction to this assignment was just that.  "We have to maintain a blog!?!?"  First of all, I hate blogs.  For my job last year we had to compose a detailed report of our shift and put it into a shared blog at the end of the night. 

So blogging as a whole has a very monotonous connotation in my mind.  But I guess this is a little different.  Definitely a little more personal, and a lot more vulnerable.  Which sort of freaks me out.  And to top it all off, our first entry is kind of broad.  "Who are you?"  Well, for starters I'd like to believe that I am a little more complex and interesting than a 2 paragraph blog post....but I think I can paraphrase and just squeeze in the the need-to-know.

Hello all,

The Fam-back row is A.J, mom, dad, me, and Daniel

front row is Maddie, Evie, and Jackie

So my name is Ben Nagel.  Benjamin Eugene is the full name.  Which makes my parents obnoxious because they named me that so my initials would be "B.E.N".  So obnoxious.  *shakes his head in disbelief*  Anyway, I was born in Atlanta, almost 20 years ago, and lived there until I was 6, then did a lot of moving around from place to place until we settled here in Columbus when I was 10.  I grew up around here and once I graduated from Olentangy High School, I knew I didn't want to leave, so I decided to attend OSU.  I love Columbus, and am thankful I grew up here, but I would honestly be happy living in a lean-to outhouse, as long as my family was with me.  Family is very important to me, and the other Nagels are definitely a huge part of my life.

We are Roman Catholic, and we are a stereotypically large family.  I am the oldest of 6.  I have two brothers Daniel (18), A.J (17), Evelyn (11), Madelyn (8), and Jacquelyn (6).  There isn't enough memory space on my computer for me to go into detail about my extended family.  But let's just say I have a Big, Fat, White Family.

So why did I join a Fraternity then?  I know a lot of people join because they never had brothers, and wanted a brotherhood experience.  That is obviously not the case with me, as I grew up with the two most awesome brothers any guy could ask for.  Daniel is on track to be Valedictorian this year, with a 4.5 GPA or something like that.  He can speak fluent Spanish, and actually spent this past summer in Spain teaching students English.  And A.J is a beast at basically any sport known to man, and he was recently featured with his friends in an ESPN interview, as well as on Yahoo!'s home page.  You may have seen the infamous "Golf Basketball Shot" before.

So you know, A.J is featured throughout the video (he even mixed the music), but he's most prominent at the end......when  he's running across the roof of an elementary school.  Epic shot though.

No, I had brothers.  That's for sure.  I more or less joined a Fraternity because I was growing a little distant from my dad throughout high school.  In my sophomore year of high school, his company was bought out, and he lost his job in the recession.  We were doing fine though, because soon after, he was hired to be the new Vice President of a small company.  The catch though was that this company was based in Kentucky.  Rather than uproot our Big, Fat, White Family, he got his own place in KY.  And he was only home in Columbus on weekends, sometimes not even that often.  This was trying on everyone in the family, and we all had to make some sacrifices, especially my mom who was tasked with single-handedly shuttling around and feeding six offspring.

The situation wasn't exactly supplemental to my relationship with my dad.  You'd think that when you don't see someone for weeks on end you could never run out of things to talk about.  Not the case.  It was almost like some stranger was coming home for dinner, when in reality it was my own dad.

Granted, him and I aren't all that similar to begin with, but we always were tight-knit.  I wanted to find that relationship again, so when I got to OSU, I was determined to join a Fraternity, because it would give me and my dad something to talk about and connect over.  (He was in Phi Kappa Theta at Ohio Northern).  And my evil plan worked.  Dad and I have definitely found some common ground, and things are getting back to the way they used to be.  Now I know that's not exactly the best reason to join a Greek institution, but it definitely worked out for me in the end.  Once I became a Pike, my social career at OSU took off.  The campus shrunk in size, I had a familiar face in every class I was taking, and I was meeting so many new people.  And I have like 52 more brothers now, bringing me to a grand total of 54.  Or something like that.  I think that's kinda awesome.  Not to mention all of the service opportunities, the leadership formation (like this class for example), and we all get like a free t-shirt every week!  I've never regretted going Greek, and I am so glad to be a brother of Pi Kappa Alpha.

Huh.  Well that's the bare necessities of "Who I Am".  So I guess the next question is "How do I want to change the world"...  My answer to this is hopefully not going to be as vague as the question itself.  Prepare for some elaboration.  I guess one thing I didn't touch on that is a major component of my life is Music.  Music has a huge, I mean HUGE presence in my life.  So huge, that it is what I am studying and hope to make a living out of.  My major is Music Education.  And therein is how I want to change the world.  I lived in a great school district that cared about the Arts, but I always heard horror stories of areas where levies didn't pass, or budgets were cut and students couldn't participate in art, theater, or music anymore.  That is something I am going to change.  I want to see Fraternities and Sororities be perceived as relevant organizations again.  But just as much, I want to see the Arts (especially music) appreciated more by society, and deemed just as practical, relevant, and educational as any math or science class.  Count on it.

Holy crap.  I just reviewed all the word vomit I threw up all over the computer screen, and I am kind of shocked.  I was not expecting to say this much, and hopefully my next posts will be a little less lengthy......because this is a little ridiculous.  But hey, I guess this whole blogging thing isn't so bad.  You just gotta do it.  Balls to the wall.  I have a sort of a life philosophy of mine, that I try to live by, which incidentally comes from one of my favorite movies of all time Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.  I will part ways this week for now, but I shall leave behind some words of wisdom from my close friend, Yoda:

"Do or do not.  There is no try."