What Loyola University Chicago Gave Me

Every course I took at Loyola University Chicago felt like a training program for AKPsi. I wasn’t just studying theory I’d apply “someday” — I was taking each class with purpose, eager to use what I was learning in real time to transform my student organization and bring it closer to its mission: shaping people, shaping business.

There was Principles of Marketing (Marketing 201) in the Quinlan School of Business, where I learned about positioning, brand identity, and the 4 Ps of marketing. I’d be scribbling rebranding ideas for AKPsi in the margins of my textbook — ways to better reflect the values I knew we stood for but weren’t expressing clearly on campus.

In COMM 268: Persuasion in the School of Communication, I learned how the way you present information can shape how people receive it — and respond. That class sparked constant ideas for how to reposition AKPsi on campus: how we framed our flyers, how we described our events, and how I pitched ideas internally to my brothers. Earning their buy-in was always step one — and without it, nothing got off the ground.

Even Cultural Anthropology helped me step back and see AKPsi through a new lens — not just as a student group, but as a functioning society with its own rituals, norms, and power structures. It gave me the distance to think critically about what kind of culture we were shaping.

Having AKPsi in the background of every class was a gift. It made the material fun, relevant, and purposeful. I genuinely looked forward to learning because I had a living, breathing ecosystem to test every theory against. I wasn’t just taking notes — I was applying them.

From freshman year into sophomore year, I pushed for change in AKPsi week after week, using the tools I was gathering in the classroom. To the older brothers, I probably sounded like nails on a chalkboard. But in truth, I was getting my first real experience in organizational communication — learning how to persuade, how to refine, and how to win people over on issues I deeply believed in.

Then, at the end of freshman year, I ran for VP of Marketing.

I had just finished Marketing 201 and had one semester of AKPsi experience, so naturally, I considered myself a seasoned pro 😆. More seriously though, I was brimming with enthusiasm and naively drawn to an impressive-sounding title that aligned perfectly with my major.

Election night came, and to set the scene: most candidates scribble a few notes and give a short speech. I showed up with a flash drive and delivered a 20-minute PowerPoint — complete with branding, positioning, rollout strategies, and KPIs. In hindsight, it was a lot — but also kind of impressive. I had taken everything I’d learned in class and applied it with full force.

By the end of the night, I was elected — AKPsi’s youngest VP of Marketing.

Keep reading to see how that worked out... 😂

Once fall semester of sophomore year started and I stepped into the role, I quickly learned that the VP of Marketing position in AKPsi was mostly symbolic at the time. I was a figurehead. All the big ideas that won me the election — events to reposition our organization on campus — hinged on control I didn’t have. Event planning power belonged to the committees. I had vision, but no authority. No budget. No team. No real domain to execute any of it.

Needless to say, I failed. Hard. And publicly.

The sting of that failure stuck with me. Sophomore fall was rough. Toward the end of the term, I stopped going to AKPsi meetings. Lost interest in my classes. People were wondering if I was going to show up for class — or even just ride my bike again.

But that’s when things started to shift.

Enter Ansa Ahmed. I’m now convinced God placed her in my path for exactly this reason.

Ansa and I had crossed paths for years — Black River Farm & Ranch horse camp and Mercy High School in Michigan, and now Loyola in Chicago. There was always a quiet thread connecting us. That sophomore year, she happened to be living just a few floors above me in Baumhart Hall. One day, she came knocking. She told me she wanted to rush AKPsi — and asked if I’d sponsor her.

Sponsoring a pledge meant showing up for everything. Not just the usual brother meetings and events, but all the extra pledge activities, too. As her big, I was expected to be there. And that structure — that quiet accountability — brought me back in before I even realized what was happening. Through her pledge process, Ansa became a lifeline. She reeled me back in.

Looking back, she probably thought she was asking me for a favor — but in reality, she was God giving me what I needed before I even knew how to ask for it.

Because once I came back, I really came back. I re-engaged. I showed up. And from that point on, I started making impact after impact — not just in AKPsi, but in other student organizations and the community. The energy I’d lost came flooding back. I found my way again.

In hindsight, Ansa didn’t just help me reconnect with AKPsi. She helped me reconnect with everything Loyola had to offer. Because AKPsi wasn’t just a fraternity — it was the anchor that made every class feel more relevant, every project more real. It was the thing that brought the theory to life. And Ansa — simply by choosing to pledge and needing me to show up — unknowingly gave me the nudge I needed to step back into my purpose.