| DubaiSis |
09-05-2010 01:19 PM |
For Preference night, I had PADFOOT and Belatrix. I was HORRIFIED that I didn’t have a full schedule. What kind of a loser would they all think I was? I was so embarrassed that I’m sure I didn’t tell anyone, and my roommates were oblivious, so they didn’t notice that I was not on the same schedule as EVERYONE else. If I’d just talked with the other girls on my floor more, I might have been able to deal with this whole process a lot better and realize I certainly was not alone. This is the only part of having my roommates participate in rush that would have been helpful. You’d end up talking through the whole process more. Or, I could have talked to my Rush Counselor or any of the 30 girls on my floor, but I was not the most open angst-ridden teenager on the planet, so I suffered in silence.
PADFOOT? Meh. I saw them every day, and they were fine; nothing memorable through the whole week. In fact, literally, I don’t remember anything about the house except preference night. They were doing the mushy pref thing and some girls were really caught up in it and I was pretty much like, get me out of here! I’m not a crier (ok, I am a crier NOW, but at the time and in that situation, it was NOT going to happen) and I thought it all looked a little overly dramatic.
At Belatrix, the ceremony was so beautiful and the girls were all so sweet, and I loved what they were saying. I’m still all but certain I didn’t cry, but I WAS moved by it all. So at the end of the night I went back to my dorm floor (we didn’t go to a central location…. No computers would have been involved anyway) and ranked our pref houses and gave the form to our Rho Chi. And then it occurred to me that I might not get my first choice. WHAT? Holy Crap. Did I say the right things? Did I do anything to offend them? Oh My God. I need to go back and re-do all of rush so that I can get this right! I didn’t suicide against PADFOOT because I was smart enough to know I’d be fine there too. But it was an out house, and not only that, it was a FAR out house! Almost the furthest out there is! And the colors? GACK, the colors. This was horrible! How was I ever going to get to tomorrow afternoon before I found out what house I was in – IF ANY! Oh my God, I could be cut by BOTH houses! What am I going to do if that happens?
All of my lack of worry about what I was doing, what I was saying, how I was presenting myself, hit me like a ton of bricks at 10:30 at night on the Sunday before I started my first day of college the next morning.
So the next day I was able to muddle through. Thankfully you don’t really DO anything the first day, right, except get your syllabus and book list and then try to find your next class on this huge campus.
Afternoon came, and my rush counselor knocked on my door with the little envelope. Hold my breath. Open the card. BELATRIX!!!! Woo hoo!!!! It’s over, and I lived! So I ran down to the Union, found my new sisters and off we went to the house. I couldn’t have been happier, although I had a very strong sense that some girls were not so happy. Alpha Xi Delta (Belatrix) was one of the smaller houses on campus, and although we’d gotten a respectable pledge class (30 out of a quota of 40), some girls had clearly gotten their last choice. In looking at my pledge class picture, there are a couple girls there who none of us can remember. I don’t know if they just made it long enough to pledge and bail or if they lasted a few weeks, but they were gone by the Dad’s day photo. Still, we had a good pledge class, and to this day I am friends with several of them. And there’s one that I might well cross the street if I saw her coming.
Over the next 4 years, I would occasionally think about what would have happened if… What if I’d not been a complete moron at Dumbledore. What if I hadn’t shown up to Ginny drunk (and probably still a little drunk at Hagrid and Hermione), what if I’d done better during Welcome and hadn’t been cut by as many. Would I have cut my beloved Alpha Xi Delta? Molly’s friend at Luna said she didn’t realize I’d gone through rush or she’d have given me a recommendation. If she wasn’t such a flake, how would that have thrown off the entire rest of my recruitment? I was DEFINITELY not Luna material, but I’d probably have gone back there since they were the most popular girls on campus, only to be cut after Welcome Back.
So that’s the story of a girl who thought she knew enough, who didn’t have a clue, who should have done some homework, and should have just relaxed more and not let this process exhaust her so, but who also found the perfect home once she finally got into a REAL conversation
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