Going greek isn’t that bad afterall

Jenna Kefauver/Staff Writer

This week I did the last thing I ever thought I would do. I went through Panhellenic Sorority Recruitment.

I never really liked sororities. But for some reason, about two weeks ago, I decided that I should pursue one. All I had to lose was $40 and five weeknights. So on Friday, Aug. 31, about 30 minutes before the registration deadline, I ran into the Campus Life office, and turned in my application, part of me confident and a much larger part of me wondering what I had just done.

With butterflies in my stomach, I tried to assure myself that one of the sororities would recruit me. But, no matter how often I reassured myself , I couldn’t fight this feeling that I was going to show up on Bid Day and my Bid Card would say “No, just go home.”

My boyfriend, ever the reassurer, asked me the next night: “What happens if someone doesn’t get picked?”, to which I responded, “You go home to Ben and Jerry and you cry.”

I’ll be honest, I’m pretty awkward. I am socially inept when it comes to small talk, and then when I start talking, I don’t stop. It was cause enough, I thought, to doubt whether I could convince at least one of the seven sororities to choose me from 500 other, probably more sorority-esque girls.

At the Meet Your Rho Gamma night, they played a video, which almost made me cry. A surprise in that I wasn’t expecting to trigger my emotions; slightly less of a surprise in that I cry at just about anything.

I left, that night, feeling excited, planning my outfits for the rest of the week, but still absolutely terrified of rejection, and confused by feelings I was having.

They told us that night, when we asked how we’d know which sorority to join, that we would “just know”, that we’d “feel at home”. Which sounded like a lot of evasive nonsense to me at the time.

But when I went to Sorority 101, I felt that feeling. Not like I could spend the rest of my life in that room, but I was getting comfortable. Maybe this was because I was becoming somewhat more comfortable in my own skin and didn’t feel like passing out anymore.

The bad thing about sorority recruitment is that they ask you the same questions they ask 500 other girls, and they get relatively similar answers every time. You have to be that one different girl. So I tried to switch up the way I worded my answer each time.

At the end of that night, four out of seven of the sororities had dropped me. I’m not going to lie and say I wasn’t sad; I was devastated. And I was really upset that I felt that way.

So I went home and tried to not cry and be pathetic. And I somehow succeeded.

I went back the next day to find out that my top choice had dropped me. I was angry, but I decided that, having at least been invited back to two parties, I should try to make the best of things. And so I went to the first party of the night, watched their Sisterhood and Traditions video and I cried. And it was ridiculously embarrassing. So in an attempt to stop my crying, I asked a question I had asked Tuesday night, to the same exact girl. And she remembered, which sucked.

But it was okay, because I had found that feeling I was looking for, the sisterhood that I didn’t think existed.