Josh Benner

Category: My Life

  • If I get one more “Happy Thanksgiving” text…

    If you have sent me a happy Thanksgiving text, thank you for thinking of me. I appreciate the thought. I, however will not be sending one. I feel like this is a phenomenon that has been occurring on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other major holidays over the past couple of years. An SMS is quick, it’s simple, it’s passive, it reaches out, it’s perfect right?

    I feel like the practice has become increasingly cliche. Again, I’m not trying to step on toes. I have received several texts today, and I feel like it has a snowball affect. A few friends send you happy Thanksgiving texts, then you feel obligated to so you have to go through the couple of hundred contacts in your phone: add. add. add. no. add. add. definately not. add. add. (new text message) add. add. add. “Why is she still in my phone? Delete!” add. add. lanline. add…..

    So you end up sending a fairly generic texts to several dozen of your closets contacts.

    I recieved one earlier this afternoon that was forwarded. Seriously? “fwd: happy Thanksgiving. Hope you have a great day.” You’ve taken something that is already completely impersonal and kicked it up a notch.

    I used to send a text message to my friends for Christmas. And for very close friends, I still think sending a text can be appropriate. Just not to everyone with whom you have an obsucre connection.

    The reason why I still think it can be appropriate for close friends, is that if it’s a major holiday, your busy, your friends are busy, there isn’t necessarily the opportunity to place a phone call to wish the person a happy holiday, but they’re a good friend, and you still want to reach out. So what do you do? Write on the Facebook wall or send them a text.

    With all of that said, I’m thankful for a number of things this year. Thankful for my family, amazing friends, good health, and opportunities. I’ve done a lot of thinking over the past couple of years about where I want to go and what I want to accomplish, and I feel like everything is so clear. I know where I want to be in a month, 3 months, 6 months, a year, 2 years, 5 years. I’m excited to see where things will be next Thanksgiving vs where they are now. For that, I am thankful.

    Happy Thanksgiving to you.

    jrb

  • Memory Lane

    Tuesday night, one of my college fraternity brothers was elected president on the Bowling Green Interfraternity Council. I had known for sometime that he had aspirations of running for president of IFC, nevertheless it was a surreal moment when it became official. I found myself thinking ”It wasn’t that long ago that I was working on helping to recruit him into Phi Delt.”

    Now he’s going to have the highest position in the BG fraternity world.

    I was at a function in Bowling Green last month with some former presidents of other large organizations on campus. I was talking with a small group of former presidents of the Interfraternity Council when one of the guys posed the question to the group as to what accomplishment we were most proud during our term. I thought about it for a moment. To me it was interesting because if someone had asked me that question when I was an undergraduate, I would have had a list of things in which I took pride, but on that Saturday a month ago – in Bowling Green – almost two years removed from college, the most meaningful thing that came to my mind was the way in which I’ve seen all of the student leaders at BG who are younger than me and who followed after me grow up and use the entire college experience as a learning opportunity. I am biased, and especially take pride in seeing how people who have been involved with IFC have grown and succeeded on campus. I feel that seeing people who have used their involvement to propel them into later success affirms my philosophy pertaining to the value of significant involvement for college undergrads.

    I also feel like it is another reassurance that I am well suited to work in student affairs.

    I would like to wish my fraternity brother the best of luck as he leads BG’s Interfraternity Council over this next year, and may it be the valuable and life changing experience for him that it was for me.

    jrb

  • The beginning

    Ok, there have been umpteen times in my life where I have vowed to start regularly updating a journal, or a diary, or a web journal, or a blog. I feel like the first entry is always an introduction to the fact that I am trying to “stick to it this time.”

    I am not going to place the expectation on myself that I am going to update this personal blog on a daily basis, but I would like to have a web platform that is completely open and where I can talk about what I am doing at the moment in more than 140 characters (ya know I love you Twitter).

    I think that this could serve valuable purposes in the future.

    Just wanted to establish some foundation for what I am doing. This part of my website is focused more around anecdotes of what I’m doing and opinions I may have on things not related to social media (although possibly sometimes related to social media).

    If you’re reading this and think, “Why do I care?” My immediate response would be, “Then why are you reading this to begin with?!” If a person doesn’t care about content in my personal blog, then I would give this advice: don’t read my personal blog.

    jrb 11/10/10 (which is 58 in binary)