“Blog,” Perenic once wrote. “It’s good for your soul.”

In just a few weeks, I’ll be back in Minnesota for Thanksgiving break. I’m looking forward to being home. Hopefully, it will be reasonably cold out, so that I can go snowboarding. Before I go home, there’s plenty to be done in both school and Fraternity. In the Fraternity, I am (among other things) the Associate Educator, which means that the duty of pairing Big/Little Brothers falls under my committee.

I have been lucky with my big/little experience thus far. All three of my little brothers have are great people. I was especially fortunate to have had the opportunity to spend extended amounts of time with each of them. My first little brother, Willis, was my roommate during my junior year. I worked with my second little brother, Vince, at Medtronic last summer. This year, my third little brother, Tyler, is my roommate.

The big/little experience is something special, something profound. For me, my little brothers have become almost as family. In the words of Scott Himes:

“In a fraternity your little brother is someone younger than you, [someone] that you take in and treat almost as a son during their time leading up to initiation. You support them through the difficult times, teach them what they need to know and celebrate with them when they accomplish great things. The best part was the special friendship that always formed and would last long after they were initiated.”

Yesterday, Matt Gordon (my Big/Little coordinator) and I sat down to pair the Associates with their Big Brothers. It was anything but a simple task. The Associates and the Brothers submit short lists of people they would like to be paired with. In an ideal world, an Associate’s top pick would correspond directly to a Brother’s top pick. Unfortunately, such is not always the case. In some circumstances, all of the Associate’s choices are “taken” before they can be assigned a Big Brother. In other cases, the opposite occurs. Either way, the challenge becomes making a good pair with effectively no input from either side.

After three hours, we completed our task.

I am happy to say that the K’Allen Lineage will be growing by 9 people to a total active membership of 23. For those unfamiliar with the concept, our lineage traces our big/little pairs, much as it would in a family. The lineage of Kyle “K’Allen” Allen, my Big Brother, is especially close, which I think is really cool.

During the selection process, I decided that I would only take a Little Brother if an Associate listed me as his top pick for Big Brother. There was one person in particular that I really wanted for a Little Brother, and it turns out that the preference was mutual. Who? Well, I can’t say quite yet (the secrecy of the pairing before the pairing ceremony is a long-held tradition), but stay tuned for an announcement of the newly expanded Keacher Lineage.