Name: Eileen Chen
Year: Super Senior
Age: 22
Majors: Business Management, Chinese Language & Culture & Psychology
Minor: Hospitality
Hometown: West Palm Beach, FL
Her Campus (HC): Let’s talk a little about your majors. What made you want to pick three?
Eileen Chen (EC): It was almost four! Hospitality was really close to being one, but it didn’t make it. I really didn’t know I wanted to do these majors until my dad told me that I did. So basically, that’s how if formulated. My father is very hands-on with academia throughout my whole life. He calculated this for me and I did what he said and honestly throughout the entire process I realized it was beneficial, but in the beginning I didn’t. I did business because I knew that’s what I wanted to do in life, Psychology because I came in with so many excess credits and me and my dad realized that if you want to manage people in the future, how are you going to manage them if you don’t understand them? So that’s where Psych comes in. And then Chinese because I am of Chinese descent and my father was like, “You know what, this will be a great opportunity to hone in on some skills that the rest of the population can’t.” So I gave it a twirl and loved it.
HC: And the minor in Hospitality to top it all off! If all else fails.
EC: I know, right? Hospitality came about from me working in it since I was 16 so this will be my seventh year. It just made sense since I’ve been working in it all my life, why not throw it in as a minor.
HC: You are quite the busy bee! On top of all of that you are in Alpha Kappa Psi. Tell us a little bit about that.
EC: Sure! Just some background first: I joined Sigma Delta Tau my sophomore year and I was able to be on executive boards and then I moved up to Rho Gamma as well as being the vice president of finance for another organization. So I was gaining great experience and leadership skills, but the one thing I was missing was business. Because at the end of the day my major is not sorority, my major isn’t finance (thank god!) and it’s also not recruitment counselor, so what do I do? I was looking around campus trying to see what other people were doing, and I didn’t really find anything right away. And then I found AKPsi. We call ourselves a fraternity, but we’re really an organization and even though we have Greek letters attached to it, we are not Greek which is funny because we have a house where we have chapter meetings and people live there.
HC: Oh wow, that’s a cool fun fact!
EC: Yeah! It’s the largest and oldest professional business fraternity. Which at the time I can only equate it to an academic speak-easy. Not too many people knew about it and I thought it sounded fun. I ended up going through the recruitment and then realizing that this was an organization not a club because there’s very extensive hours that go into the new member process. The skills you learn and develop are truly the most beneficial things I could learn on this campus. I’ve done a lot on this campus so I feel like I can say that, so with AK Psi I was so inspired by the process and what it gave me. I’ve done a lot of executive roles and I wanted to give back to this chapter that’s given so much to me. So I ran to be the Vice President of Public Relations, and from there they placed a lot of emphasis on the community knowing more about AKPsi. Like I said before I didn’t know anything about them before I rushed so we thought during rush is the time to blow up and get our name out there. I tacked on the recruitment part of the title because we were focused on it so much! This year we successfully brought in between 40 to 50 new members, with nearly 130 people showing interest in our recruitment process so I’d say it’s working.
HC: Definitely working. Now you said it is a business fraternity, what is it that you guys do?
EC: Like other organizations, we have pillars that we build ourselves upon: service, integrity and of course, business. The Vice President of Professional Activities is solely in charge of setting up events that the fraternity can attend and benefit from, so we all have our own individual information sessions which are really awesome. We also hold workshops that help with public speaking, resume critiques and professional dress so we do that for our brothers. And for our service pillar, which is under me, is in charge of community service. Everyone is required four hours in the fraternity, just how it kind of would be in other organizations so we don’t have essential philanthropy that we sponsor, but we participate in other people’s organizations. We’re trying to increase the hours because we do see how lacking service can be and general so we try to strive for that. We’re also not just strictly business, we’re also fun and loving. You really get to build a family connect with people. I live in our house and I can honestly say these are some of the best people I’ve ever met. I couldn’t imagine the college experience without them.
HC: We know it’s the end of the semester, but is there anything you would like to broadcast to our readers?
EC: Yes, we have our Spring Rush coming up. The details will not be revealed until after winter break, maybe early next semester. Our recruitment process is pretty early on, usually the first two weeks of school, and the only thing that’s mandatory is the Rush Party which is usually on a Friday. We want to advertise that it’s not just business majors! We have people from all over: one of our past exec members was a film major and one of our brother’s is an Art major so we’re a very diverse group. Then the other misconception is only men can join since we call ourselves a fraternity so I want to stress that we are co-ed. We’re open to everyone – the only people who can’t rush are incoming freshman without an FSU GPA.
HC: Do you think AKPsi has prepared you for what to expect?
EC: I think so. I’m graduating in a couple of weeks (ah!), but out of all the organizations I’ve been a part of, I feel like AKPsi has prepared me for my professional life the best. With graduation, a lot of people are scared about job offers and where they want to go, the funny thing is I have the opposite problem. I currently have six offers and I don’t know which one to choose! It sounds great, but it’s just as stressful as having none for me. The decision process is killing me, but people keep telling me that the point is to pick a job you like no matter what. So I credit a lot of that to AKPsi, whenever a recruiter comes or an employer comes and they see my resume the want to know more about AKPsi and I think a lot of people don’t realize how beneficial that can be during the job search and interviewing process.