Hahahahahahah omg! I pretty much died laughing when I read this.

Uh...I think I know who this is actually!

ebdelt, I'm PMing you my guess of the school and which house is which!

i am loving this!

x

So the next day comes. This is the last day before bid day....yes guy's formal rush last three days including bid day. I walk over to the Greek wearing some jeans and a jacket considering it's pouring rain. There was no dresscode for Day 2. I find my Rho Gam's who are passing out slips with the houses each guy was invited to. As my Rho Gam digs through his manila folder, my heart stops a couple beats thinking what if I was cute by all the houses already. Eventually he finds it and hands it to me. I was invited back to two houses...TWO! I was a little agitated so slyly I peaked into the manila folder while my Rho Gam wasn't looking and noticed some guys had 5 or 6, BUT some guys only had one or none at all. I breathed a slight eye of relief and realized I should happy I had houses to go back to. I was asked back to Brad Paisley and Garth Brooks. I was estatic to be asked back by Brad Paisley, I assumed I had made a good impression on the Brad Paisleys after all! I was saddened that I wasn't asked back to George Strait, but I could see it coming. I liked them a lot but had no previous interaction with them and no contacts within the fraternity. I had gotten 1 out of the 2 fraternities I really wanted and that was what mattered to me.

So the way Round 2 worked was that we had three hours to divide up our time visiting the houses we were asked back to. We could spend the whole three hours in one house, ten minutes in each, or even come fill out your preference sheet and then leave. Now don't ask me why I did it...I was a mindless and stubborn 18-year-old boy who had no idea what he was doing. I came to the rational (or at least I viewed it) conclusion that I wanted to be a Brad Paisly or nothing at all, so I would not be going back to the Garth Brooks house this round. So off I trodded to the Brad Paisley house where they were grilling outside the house. I was offered a hamburger which I obliged to and made my way into the house. I soon found out that neither my camp counselor nor the guy I knew from high school were there that day. So I decided to introduce myself to the chapter president again. We talked for a little bit and he introduced me to a few other guys. I ended up talking to the President of the Student Body who was also a Brad Paisley and had an awesome conversation with him. So basically I ended up meeting several different Brad Paisleys and had good conversations with pretty much all of them. However I could tell I was starting to feel like the time was dragging on. After two hours in this one house I felt like I had pretty much talked to everyone I could except the Rush Chair who seemed to always be talking to someone else. It was an awful day of weather so I decided to just take my leave and hope for the best.

I went up to my Rho Gam to fill out my preference sheet and wrote down one name...Brad Paisley. It was nothing personal against Garth Brooks, I just didn't feel a connection to them, or at least the guys I had talked to during formal rush. Plus their quality top-to-bottm was a little questionable and the tent talk about them wasn't too great. I signed my card and left, feeling uneasy about my fortune for tomorrow but feeling as though I could do everything I possibly could during my time in the Brad Paisley house. If it didn't work out then it wasn't meant to be.

ack!! more please!

i need my daily fix... :)

So the next day I had the thought of bid day on my mind....couldn't shake it. Bid Day was on a Tuesday, but I had a night class on Tuesday that I was already dreading and it was only the second week of school. We were told by IFC that if we had a conflict we could go to the Greek life office and find out if we got bids and if so we could sign the bids. I remember walking over to the Greek housing where the Greek office was also located at the time (it has since moved). I walked in and told the receptionist why I was there and she went to go talk to the the guy who was in charge of the IFC and fraternities. He told me he would find my name and see if I got a bid. So I sat down in the lobby and remember just praying that I would have a bid. I knew since I suicided Brad Paisley it was all or nothing, but now I was wondering if I should have given Garth Brooks another chance. I beat it into my mind that all I wanted was Brad Paisley as I waited paitently. Eventually the director invited me into his office. My heartbeat began to beat rapidly, and then he gave me the news...





























































that...






















































































I had not received a bid. :(


He proceeded to tell me that this year was the most rushees that ever come through recruitment and that over 75 guys had gone bidless. I kept it together but I'm sure my expression showed my disappointment. I thanked him for his time, shook his hand, and left the office. Honestly, I don't remember what happened after that. I took the long walk of shame back to my room, thinking what I did wrong. I spent that night alone for the most part as my roommate was out having a crazy bid night with his new pledge brothers and fraternity, Trace Adkins. I remember thinking how this could happen to me when overall I felt like I was a great guy. What did I do at Brad Paisley's house that could make them decide that I wasn't what they were looking for. I talked to my family and told them the bad news and my sister was sympathetic to my cause considering she had dropped out of her school's recruitment.

The worst part was constantly seeing all the fun Greeks were having. I saw plenty of facebook pictures and people walking around for mixers, formals and semi-formals, philanthropies such as Anchor Splash which seemed like all the fraternity guys were having lots of fun and forming great friendships. I just felt like I was missing out on everything and that I hadn't formed any great friendships at my school. Soon I was wondering if this was really was supposed to be. I soon began visiting my best friends from high school and saw how much fun they were having at their schools and I wished I could have that. It just all seemed so unfair. While they were out having the time of their lives, I ended up working a job where I worked weekend nights and barely went out. My most exciting part of the day was class. It just seemed so wrong. I knew I didn't want to give up on Greek life, so the story will continue on. ;)

Aaah! Just when I was thinking the story was about to end!
I'm really enjoying this

how sad that the brad paisleys did not extend you a bid. i can't wait to hear what happens next.

Question: I come from a school where fraternities don't have formal rush.

How does fraternity bid matching work? Is it the same as us where there is bid matching and you are extended. one bid? Or could you theoretically have been offered a bid to both if you had attended both?

A rushee can theoretically get a bid from every fraternity at my school, and it's happened before...let's just say his last name ended with Bush ;)

It's weird how rush can be so different at various schools. Most guys at my school would only go to ONE fraternity's rush. They might go to a pre-rush party for another org but would only go through rush week for one of them.

Ditto. All the guys at my school make fun of the sorority women doing formal rush, and I've always been secretly jealous at how laid-back their process is. They have a few nights of parties, and the PNMs (rushees?) just show up and hang out. Afterwards the brothers just talk it over and vote, and if they like a guy he gets a bid. No chanting, no bumping, no release figures, no quota, no super-complicated membership selection. Of course, they also don't have 200 potentials coming over every night. I don't mean to derail the thread (I'm loving the story!) but I can't help but think the way they do it is more like what our founders intended for membership selection, instead of the circus formal recruitment can be. Maybe that's why I enjoy COB so much - you can sit and chat and relax and actually get to know the girl instead of yelling in her ear for 7 minutes in a room filled with squealing girls and then getting bumped. Oh, well.

So as the first semester of my freshman year came to a close, I had gotten over the fact that I wasn't Greek. I had made some friends finally that I was starting to hang out with consistently and a general sense of belonging. After Christsmas break, I was back and hade made even more friends and had a new and better job that didn't require me to work weekend nights. It seemed like I finally found some order in my life. Then one day I got an email from my school's Greek life department advertising IFC Spring Rush. Truth be told I didn't even know there was a spring rush until this email...I was pretty out of the loop on Greek life. I wanted to be over thinking about a fraternity but this lingering thought in my mind to give it a try. I consulted some of my friends in sororities and they told me that a couple of fraternities do a spring rush and George Strait is usually pretty serious about it.

The George Straits I had met through the year did seem like good guys, and I still had a somewhat bitter taste in my mouth from Brad Paisley. I had learned that these guys usually took big fall pledge classes, but this fall had taken 15 less than their usual quota. I also learned that only one guy got a bid from them during formal rush that hadn't secured an oral bid prior to. There was an interest form one could fill out if they wanted to meet with the George Straits for Spring Rush. The IFC also had a very informal info session on what to expect for Spring Rush. Soon after I submitted my form I got an email from the George Straits saying they were having a cook-out in front of their house and they'd love for me to come over.

So that day I mustered up the courage to head over, wearing my some casual but fratty attire. There were about 6 or 7 other guys who were rushing in the spring. I ended up talking to their president, rush chair, and several actives including some that I already knew. I had some awesome conversations and enjoyed some food and also payed corn throw and some other stuff. They were just a really impressive set of guys who seemed to have their act together. The only thing I didn't really like was that they frat bashed some of the other fraternities. Even then, despite the fact I was there for three hours, it seemed so much less. I loved my time spent there and could see myself as a George Strait. They told me they would contact me if they made any decisions about their spring class and if they had any more rush events.

Well days went by and I heard nothing. I was beginning to wonder what the deal was. I began to realize something wasn't right and the deadline for when a fraternity could sign a guy for spring rush was the next day. Then finally I got an email saying that George Strait had decided that they were not going to take a spring class this year, but greatly encourage me and the other guys to rush as sophomores and we could hang out with them more then.

Needless to say I was disappointed but not heartbroken. I wasn't as emotionally invested this time around and even though I greatly enjoyed my one time hanging out with them and would have loved to be a George Strait, I couldn't be too upset. I figured they had liked me and just decided that they didn't want to take a small pledge class of 3 or 4. They said they would keep in contact with me if I still wanted to rush a sophomore...maybe then I'd be a George Strait or heck maybe I'd find another fraternity I clicked with even better. I was a little over this whole Greek thing and was beginning to wonder if I was coming off as desperate to be Greek...truth be told I really just wanted to find some good guy friends and party. I had met plenty of girls but hadn't formed really any close friendships with any guys. I had four or five really great best friends from high school that I'm still best friends with now. I wanted to have that group of brotherhood here in college and I knew a fraternity was a great outlet for that. I would think about it more if I wanted to rush for a third time throughout the rest of the semester, but when summer came around I knew I wanted to do it. I registered again for fall rush and would not be an idiot this time. I was going to make sure I did as many summer rush events as I couuld...so the final chapter of the story will finally be completed tomorrow! ;)