Luck of the Irish
There is truly no greater feeling than being awarded a leadership position, having a checklist of accomplishments you hope the group can achieve in the coming year, and little by little getting to check off those accomplishments. I've been a member of the campus Irish dance group, UR Celtic, since my first week here as a freshman, but this year I'm co-president, and the whole game has changed. I'm no longer just there to dance every week, but I'm actually there to make sure that the vision each member has for the group gets somehow incorporated into what we're doing.
That kind of scared me when I first got the position because there wasn't really a formal hand-off, and, I'll be totally honest, I literally had no idea what was going on! But I'm lucky to have a great partner-in-crime who shares my leadership style and larger goals for Celtic. My co-president and I have both been in the group for the exact same amount of time, so we've seen all of the same ups and downs, and know what has worked in the past and what hasn't. We're finally in a position where we can shape the group into the one that we've been wanting it to be for the past three years.
The biggest validation of this effort is that we're goin' on a road trip! But not just any road trip. This particular road leads to the first intercollegiate Irish Dance dance competition in the history of North America! It's being held at Villanova University, which is outside of Philadelphia, and I can barely use words to explain how crazy it is that we're actually going to be participating in this ground-breaking event. There are dozens of collegiate Irish Dance groups across America and yet no one has ever thought to bring them together. But when it finally happens, we'll be there.
Not only will we be proudly representing a small slice of the cultural diversity at the University of Rochester, but we will also get to meet other college students who have the same unusually niche interest as us. They'll probably understand that the best way to take a break from studying at 2 a.m. is to practice a reel in your living room; why, when you're walking to class in the morning, it's natural to be listening to this instead of this; or what you do when you disappear into the campus dance studio three hours a week.
UR Celtic before going on stage to perform at a George Eastman Circle event during Meliora Weekend 2013. And I know this is super blurry, but it's the only current picture we have of (almost) the whole group. It's missing two people!
1. We had to find out about the competition. One our new freshman members actually brought it to the group's attention in early October, and I love that. It means that, only a month after joining, she already felt like she had a significant role and could have ideas and share them. It's so cool to me that it wasn't a senior or an e-board member or something who made the first move here. Obviously we all reacted really well to the idea of going, because who doesn't want to be part of history? Which leads us to:
2. We had to figure out if we could feasibly go. Once the initial haze of the excitement about this prospect cleared, my co-president, our choreographer, and myself had to sit down and think: Are we actually good enough for this? Can we get a routine ready in time? Will preparing for this take away from practicing for our other campus commitments, which chronologically come first? The answer to the first one is: Definitely. The answer to the second one is: Hopefully. The answer to the third one is: We're now multitasking experts. In terms of ability, I think Celtic has always been good, we've just never been quite as dedicated or creative as we are now. We have a particularly talented and excited group of dancers at the moment, and I think that really shows on stage. Getting choreography ready in time without taking away from practicing for other commitments kind of ended up being a package deal because we approached it strategically: We were in two shows during Meliora Weekend, so we decided to use our Mel Weekend choreography at this competition so we could practice everything all at once. We're now adding another 30-second section to the middle of the dance to spruce it up for competition, which means that have something new to work toward and practice for the next few weeks, but we also didn't have to completely learn a new dance. So the big answer to the big question is yes, we can feasibly go. But:
3. We had to figure out how in the world we would pay for this. Well, that's what Students' Association-granted supplemental funding is for! We applied for conference funding and sort of miraculously got it. It's funny because the first email confirmation they sent had the wrong amount in the award—about half of what we needed—and we kind of panicked that we wouldn't be able to go. Boy, was I happy to get the "Just kidding, we're actually giving you all the money" email! So, in short, thirteen of us are traveling 331 miles on a three-car, interstate road trip to a city where we'll stay in three hotel rooms for two nights, and the whole thing is only costing each member about $10. I just can't even. Is that not crazy cool?!
There are a bunch of boring details that I've left out of the list — such as booking the hotel rooms, signing a lot of waivers and forms, finding costumes, etc.—but you get the gist. There's a lot of minutiae involved in pulling off something like this, yet they're all somehow coming together. It's kind of amazing to be at the head of making one member's idea a reality for an entire group of excited people.
I know it's early to postulate about this because it's only October, but I just already have that feeling of taking something on and then leaving it slightly better than you found it. And that is the most gratifying feeling in the whole world.