Letter to my Younger Self: Dylan Ford, IUPUI ’17
You don’t realize it just yet, but you are sitting in the passenger seat of your own life. Not because you lack ambition or intelligence, but because observation has always felt safer than assertion, and stability has always seemed like something to protect rather than challenge. You’ve learned how to do well enough without demanding more of yourself. You’ve learned how to keep your head down, make good grades, work hard, and stay out of trouble, convincing yourself that this is what progress looks like.
In many ways, that instinct makes sense. You were raised by a man who understood responsibility long before you understood choice. Your grandfather never attended college, but he knew leadership intimately; through work, through sacrifice, through showing up every day and expecting more from himself than the world required. He was successful, respected, and steady, and he carried with him an unspoken charge that you felt even when it was not articulated: make something of yourself, honor the opportunities in front of you, and leave things better than you found them. You absorbed that lesson quietly, translating it into good behavior and measured success from the earliest days of your childhood all the way through high school; however, something inside you often wondered whether playing it safe was the same thing as moving forward.
That’s why, in the summer of 2013 before college, you make a promise to yourself. Not loudly, not ceremoniously, but with the quiet resolve of someone who knows he cannot keep drifting. You decide that when you arrive on campus, you’ll find something to belong to, something to commit to, something that asks more of you than simply doing what is expected.
So when your first weekend presents a campus wide volunteer opportunity, you say yes without fully knowing why, only sensing that movement, even if it is uncertain movement, is better than standing still. You don’t know at the time that the man leading your group that day, the one with an easy confidence and three unfamiliar Greek letters stitched on the side of his hat, will become a hinge point in your story. You spend the day serving the community talking about everything except fraternities, and building a connection rooted in shared experiences rather than affiliation; through that, you begin to learn that friendship formed through purpose has a depth that casual proximity never does. Eventually, curiosity gets the better of you and you ask what those letters mean.
That question, as casual and unassuming as it feels, is the moment you begin to lean forward.
Over lunch, he explains Phi Delta Theta not as a line on a resume or a social identity, rather, an opportunity. An opportunity that comes with responsibility, expectation, and a chance to build something from the ground up. An opportunity to become a founding father. He tells you that the chapter is in its infancy. It’s fragile, unfinished, and that joining wouldn’t mean inheriting tradition as much earning it. You listen, intrigued but still unconvinced, certain that he’s describing a version of leadership that is meant for someone else.
You walk away telling yourself that you will think about it lated, unaware that later has a way of waiting patiently for the people it intends to change.
When you finally accept your bid the following semester, it doesn’t arrive with fireworks or certainty; instead, it arrives with weight. Two days later, you agree to serve as community service chairman, not because you feel prepared, but because you recognize that some obligations do not ask whether you are ready, and that doing what ought to be done is a responsibility, not a choice.
It doesn’t take long to realize how precarious the fifteen person emerging chapter truly is. That truth becomes unavoidable during the Kleberg Emerging Leaders Institute where you learn, plainly without embellishment, that our survival and ability to charter is not guaranteed. Without a substantial fall recruiting class, the opportunity disappears entirely; there is no legacy to lean on, no margin for complacency, and no one else coming to save it.
What followes is the first time you truly understand that one man is no man, and that leadership only works when effort becomes collective. “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” You come back with urgency, with purpose, with a growing understanding that influence is not about charisma or being interesting, it’s about being consistently interested and maintaining belief. Conversations turn into commitments, commitments turn into momentum, and against the odds twenty-seven men choose to build something together. It is the largest fraternity recruitment class in our campus’s brief Greek history, and a movement that propelled us from an emerging chapter to the Indiana Mu chapter of Phi Delta Theta. It is also here that you begin to understand adaptive leadership, not in theory, but as a practice shaped by listening, adjusting, and refusing to abandon your values under pressure.
As you move into roles like Recruitment Chairman and later President, the distinction between involvement and accountability becomes unmistakable. Titles don’t make work easier; rather, they make the consequences clearer. Early in your presidency, you face a moment that tests everything you believe about duty, leadership, and integrity; you face a moment that could have been easy to overlook or shy away from.
But you do not.
You act decisively and thoughtfully, guided by an unspoken principle that, again, doing what ought to be done is a responsibility, not a choice. You consider not only the immediate consequences, but also the impact on oyur brothers who look to you for guidance. You consider that Friendship depend on trust and honesty, and are a product of the culture you helping to cultivate. The aftermath is filled with reflection, self-examination, and the quiet work of ensuring that the culture you help build reflects honesty, care, and accountability. In that process, you learn that Sound Learning is not confined to classrooms, it lives in reflection, in the courage to confront difficult questions, and in valuing the people who walk the path with you. You come to understand that Rectitude is no about avoiding mistakes, but about stepping forward when it matters most, even before you have all of the answers.
In navigating that moment, the bonds between our brothers deepened in ways that can hardly be measured. Facing challenges openly and with integrity allowed members to step into their own responsibilities, and the chapter emerged stronger, more cohesive, and more united than ever.
The year that follows is filled with measurable success: BMOC winner, recruitment growth, GPA increases, significant philanthropic movement, intramural championships, campus and GHQ recognition. You name it. Achievements across nearly every metric. Yet what endures is not the applause, but knowing that when faced with a defining moment, you chose duty over convenience and integrity over image.
As your time as an undergraduate draws to a close, you step back. Not because you are disengaged, rather, you have learned that leadership is not a fixed posture, but a responsibility that changes with the needs of the moment. You advise, you mentor, you serve voluntarily at higher levels, and you begin to understand that lifelong engagement is not a slogan, it’s a responsibility to continue investing long after personal gain has faded.
Along the way, Phi Delta Theta gives you abundantly more than you could ever hope to return: brothers who stand beside you at weddings, friendships that transcend geography and time, phone calls that begin with “both mom and baby are healthy” or end with “I’ll be right there,” and bonds forged not through convenience, but shared responsibility. It gives you a clearer sense of who you are and who you can become.
And then one day, you’re holding your two sons. Two boys watching the world with the same quiet attentiveness that you once had. You realize that the work has once again shifted. You are no longer focused on proving yourself of even building something new; you are focused on transmission. On striving in all ways to transmit the values and lessons you learned as a Phi Delt to them not only, not less, but greater than they were transmitted to you. You understand that lifelong engagement isn’t about staying close to an organization, but about remaining faithful to the values it instilled in you.
The letters you once couldn’t read now light the path you walk. The passenger seat you once occupied no longer defines you. What matters is that you learned when to take the wheel, when to share it, and when to trust others with the road ahead.
So hear this, younger me, as you sit on campus on your first day with a steady, yet uncertain hopefulness: you were never meant to remain a passenger, but you were also never meant to travel alone. Phi Delta Theta will show you that the measure of a life is not what you achieved for yourself, but in the friendships you build, the integrity you uphold, and the legacy you preserve to pass on, not only, not less, but greater than it was given to you.
Take the wheel.
Your brothers are waiting.
The man, father, husband, brother, and friend you are to become are waiting.
Dylan Ford
Indiana Mu Class of 2017
Kappa West Province President
