Ben Merk

Honors 1010(005)
9/29/2015
A recent time when I had to use my core values in making a decision
was when I was offered a bid to join the fraternity Sigma Phi Epsilon (SigEp). I
had to use my values in this decision because I couldnt join an organization
which I didnt believe in and which didnt coincide with my values. So, I had
to see if the brothers and the fraternity as a whole had similar values to
mine, especially values that relate to my involvement at UC. I thought for
almost a week about whether or not SigEp had similar beliefs to me on
education, on commitment, on family, on respect, and on all my values. After
careful thought, I decided that the majority of my values were reflected
within the fraternity and vice-versa, so I accepted and joined the fraternity. If
I had not gone through this process of using my values to make the decision I
could have made a decision for the wrong reasons or not joined because I
didnt see the correlation with my values and the values of SigEp.
Similar to my decision regarding SigEp, I have had to look at many
other groups present at UC and decide if I should join them. Besides simply
comparing the values of the group with my own values as I discussed in the
previous paragraph, I had to weigh how the effects of joining a group would
coincide with my values. For example, after joining SigEp, I was forced to
limit myself from joining other organizations. The time commitment involved
with being a successful engineering student and a fraternity member is
simply too much to get involved with a bunch of organizations. Joining too
many would cause me to concede one of my values, either commitment
because I would not be truly committed to one organization, would not be
getting enough sleep and sacrifice my health and fitness, or would be
overinvolved with the organizations and the quality of my school work would
drop. Thus, I was forced to limit my involvement at UC to the SigEp,
Engineering Tribunal, and Honors until I can find more time to join a new
organization and still fulfill my commitments to the organizations I am
already involved with and be a successful student.