Merit Badge University is Done!!!

YES!!!!! MBU is done!

So if you didn't know, didn't ask me, didn't look at my Facebook page, anything. I will fill you in, I suppose.

So I was the Merit Badge University Director for my fraternity, Alpha Phi Omega, at Auburn. Planning began somewhere in early August 2014, if not earlier. MBU was planned little by little. Bit by bit. Instructor after instructor confirmed. Details fell into place. Days, weeks, months. All of them passed. Hours were spent working on MBU planning; it was all worth it, too.

MBU went so so smoothly! I wasn't expecting things to fall into place nearly as well as they did.

 I was worried about not having enough volunteers? Volunteers came through.

I was worried about rain messing up the day somehow. Prettiest Auburn day i've seen in a long time.

I was worried that instructors would back up. They did. My leadership team was able to work around each and every setback through the week before the event. There were four or five instructors that backed out the Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday before MBU.

Everything works itself out at the end of the day. It always seems to. Someway. Somehow.

Here are some of the things that happened at MBU:

690 Scouts participated
Abbie The Tiger attended!
Two Red-Tailed Hawks visited lunch
The National President of Alpha Phi Omega was in attendance.
Multiple people on Section and Region Staff with Alpha Phi Omega
44 Merit Badges were taught
We had someone with a Quad-Copter take video from the sky!

It was just a really great event. I've got photos and video from the weekend that I will be putting together in to a video to be posted once everything settles down.

Mom, Jesse, and company stayed at my apartment with me. The weekend concludes with a huge bonfire at Chewacla State Park. After the bonfire I was ready for bed. I got three hours of sleep the night before; it finally caught up with me. Oddly, mother's Xterra refused to crank.

This caused great distress and confusion. See, the vehicle would crank and would turn on the vehicle's electronics; however, the engine would not turn over nor start and it would not release the car key. The steering wheel was not "locked" and these issues puzzled each and every person at that camp. Collectively we diagnosed the car from almost everything from starter issues to a bad alternator and probably more.

A very small flashlight was inhibiting the gearshift's ability to be fully in park. Everything appeared to be in park when it was actually between park and reverse.

So many men. SO. MANY. MEN. Were incapable of figuring out what was going on with the car. Something as simple as checking the gearshift could have saved my hour of sleep that I lost due to the springing forward of all our clocks. Big thanks to you, Ben Franklin, for messing up all our sleep schedules (if that's correct with Big Ben).

MBU was so much fun. It turned out so well. It went so smoothly. The shirts and patches were big hits! AND I got this Selfie with Aubie and like 7 other pictures with America's best mascot!