My name is Amy Even and I’m a senior at Augie as well as a member of the Delta Chi Theta sorority. When I pledged Delta Chi in 2014, I expected to build long-lasting friendships and to find my home away from home. Three years later, I can say I have been blessed with just that. This loving and supportive group of women have supported me throughout my college experience and it used to break my heart to think about graduating. It was easy to be saddened by the thought of leaving this wonderful place and all of my sorority sisters, but this past summer completely changed my mentality.
I am an accounting and business management major. During the summer of 2016, I worked at Deloitte & Touche in the South Loop of Chicago as an audit intern. A few weeks before my internship began, I received an e-mail from Kierra Smith, a Delta Chi that was a senior when I was a freshman. It turns out that she worked at Deloitte and was assigned to be my “buddy” throughout my internship. I was ecstatic to discover that I kne
w someone within the company. Kierra and I met for lunch periodically throughout my internship to talk about how I was doing. She was honestly a godsend for me that summer because I had very little audit experience going into my internship. I asked her upwards of 400 questions throughout the duration of my internship and she was more than happy to give me advice and guide me in the right direction. I don’t know what I would have done without her kind and encouraging spirit leading me. I was so pleased to receive a full-time job offer at the end of the summer and I have no doubt in my mind that I have Kierra to thank.
I also had an amazing mentor at Deloitte that just so happened to be a Delta Chi as well! Courtney Kauffman is from the Diamond pledge class of Spring 2008 (Giraffe family) and graduated from Augustana in 2011. I will never forget the day that we met for lunch towards the end of my internship. We met at this cute little stir-fry place in the heart of Chicago. Having never met Courtney before and the fact that she was my mentor, I was expecting the lunch to be business-oriented and slightly more formal than a casual get-together. As soon as Courtney walked in, she came up to me and gave me a hug after gasping at my height (she’s closer to 5 feet tall whi
le I’m almost 6 feet tall). We sat and talked for over an hour about rush, pledging, formals, semi-formals, you name it. After we got all of our sorority talk, Courtney asked me about my internship and gave me tons of advice on how to excel in my position. Once we left the restaurant, she hugged me again and told me to never hesitate to ask her for help. I was so grateful for her kind words and for making me feel like I was back at Augustana in an environment that was so new to me.
All in all, I learned that graduating doesn’t mean leaving Delta Chi. It means getting to grow professionally and one day sharing your experiences with someone who was in the same position as you were on the first day of your internship. I find so much comfort in knowing that there’s endless lady bug love waiting for me in the real world.
Written by Amy Even
Delta Chi Theta 
You must be logged in to post a comment.