Here’s the deal. I’m in a number of leadership roles at my school, American University. This semester, I am:

• Director of Entrepreneurship for my professional business fraternity, Alpha Kappa Psi, where I work to foster a spirit of innovation in our brotherhood through entrepreneurial ventures, speakers, and activities
• Director of Regional Activity for the AU chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA), where I work to coordinate with the regional community to foster higher learning in public relations and communications
• President of the brand new AU Social Media Club for Education (AU-SMCEDU), working to teach social media skills to students and faculty, as well as encourage social media and technology use in the classroom for modern learning

My goal is to make this semester (and the next) one of the best semesters in history for all three of these organizations. That’s where you come in. I’m looking for entrepreneurs, professional communicators, and social media smarties to come speak, lead workshops, or even utilize our own resources for each of these organizations. You don’t have to be famous, have thousands of Twitter followers, or have started your own business to fall in these categories. I just need people with a healthy passion for each of these things who would be willing and able to speak to a bunch of fun, eager, and smart college students (think: potential interns! cheap labor!).

I can’t wait to hear from you. Thanks in advance, and I’m looking forward to an exciting year!

Sure, it’s inconvenient. It’s expensive for the local government. And really, it’s detrimental to the productivity of our local businesses, schools, and government. But it’s just FUN.

Between last night and today I spent a fair bit of time in the snow, playing, exploring and just overall enjoying the largest snowstorm I’ve ever been in. This afternoon we even had a giant Alpha Kappa Psi (my co-ed professional business fraternity) snowball fight in the quad on AU’s campus. It was a blast. Anyway, for your viewing pleasure, here’s some pictures of the #SNOM–the great D.C. Blizzard of 2010.

Just a quick update tonight with a rapid-fire overview of what my weekend has been like. Friday and Saturday I devoted purely to Social Justice Camp DC, which was absolutely incredible. I met a ton of amazing people, learned a lot of amazing stuff and well, got inspired. But I really hate skimming over so much important information, so I’m going to do a great big write-up of the experience tomorrow or Wednesday and get that up here and out for all of yall to read. I’ll probably highlight a few of the causes I’m really excited to get involved with (probably this summer, when I have some more free time) and explain some of my own, personal, key takeaways from the (un)conference–I’ll explain the “unconference” part later too.

In addition, I got to spend some time with two of my best friends in the world who just recently moved back to D.C. In kind of an odd coincidence, they both moved away (one to Seattle, the other to Tampa, Florida) shortly before I left to go abroad. Now that I’m back in D.C., they’ve moved back as well! I couldn’t be happier about it. We had a great time hanging out and needless to say, I really missed them. I can say with 100% certainty they are going to make this semester much more fun and hopefully a little stressful than it might have been otherwise. Thanks guys, glad you’re back!

Finally, on my desk right now I’ve got no less than five post-its screaming at me with variations and extensions on my main to-do list. It’s long, diverse and about half-fun. Unfortunately some of the things on my list are pretty tedious: “update résumé”, “sort through Twitter favorites”, “finish AU merit awards profile”, “scholarship applications”… But others are pretty fun, things like: “evergreen column for The Eagle“, “make cookbook binder”, “write blog posts!” You get the idea.

After that we walked over to Capitol Hill Books and geeked-out wandering around stacks and stacks of amazing old books. They also have hysterical signs. And try as I might, I can never resist books–I picked up a copy of “The American Presidency” by Clinton Rossiter, published in 1956 (I believe I’ve got a 1959 edition–awesome). I don’t know when I’ll have time to read it, but I read the intro right there in the bookstore and I’m already engrossed.

Finally I wound up in Peregrine Espresso which is a fantastic little coffee shop with pretty lattes AND they have a Twitter account. I’m sold. I’ll be going back. I did a little reading and then biked back to Union Station so I could be a wuss and metro up the hill instead of having to bike up Massachusetts Ave. (it’s rough, okay?!).

Anyway, next up will be two exciting blog posts:

1. A good, thorough recap of Social Justice Camp DC (#sojuca!)
2. A look at the power of public relations as it can be related to the dissident media of early civil rights movements in America and the current news cycle + social media (that’s a little broad and vague yet, still working on it)

Keep your eyes peeled. Also, I’ve got my first story (story, not column–as in I’m playing the “reporter” role this time) coming out in The Eagle this Thursday! You’ll know it’s online when I do.

As I’ve said many times before, Copenhagen was a wonderful experience, but I did miss Washington, D.C., and I missed my friends here more than anything. Today’s been a busy day of reuniting with many of those friends.

For lunch, I met up with several friends in Dupont Circle. We ate quickly, but we must’ve sat and talked for over an hour. Also today was our first chapter meeting of the semester (for my professional business fraternity, Alpha Kappa Psi), and my first chapter meeting since last May, over eight months ago. It’s hard to believe it’s been so long. I saw a lot of the familiar faces–including my little, who sometimes seems like she really could be related to me–as well as a lot of new ones. Since I’ve been gone there’s been an entirely new class of brothers to enter the fraternity and it’s great meeting them as well. Also, my little took a little of her own, making her my grandlittle, and it was amazing to finally meet her in person!

Finally, I spent a little time tonight just hanging out with some of my best friends from this past summer. Even playing Wii with them seems almost foreign, since it’s been almost six months since I’ve held a controller.

Tomorrow is the first day of classes and boy is it a busy first day for me. This semester I’m taking 18 credit hours–six classes worth–and I have five of those classes on Mondays. In some ways I’m dreading the work, but for the most part I’m kind of excited. The classes I have this semester seem interesting, and should make for some interesting lessons and reading. For what it’s worth, they include:

• Public Speaking (probably the one I’m the most excited about)
• Public Relations Writing
• Principles of Organizational Behavior and Management
• Intermediate Statistics (not dreading it, but I know it will probably require the most effort on my part)
• Competition in an Interdependent World (my last general education requirement!)
• Media and the American Mind (an honors colloquium–i.e. special topics–course, should be absolutely fascinating)

I start my internship on Tuesday. Expect a pretty decent blog post on that Tuesday night. I’ve held off talking about it too much just because, to be honest, I don’t really know what to expect. It’s a pretty prestigious internship and I’ve been incredibly lucky to receive this opportunity. I know it’s going to be a great experience, but I want to have some firsthand knowledge before I go into much detail here on the blog. Might need to add a little disclaimer, too–”none of the opinions expressed on this blog are representative of my employer nor it’s clients”.

It’s good to be back. Now time to get to work and kick this semester into gear.