I'm from Alaska and went to FSU. I was asked if I needed a passport to get there! At one party a girl asked " Alaska, isn't that down by Australia"? Or my personal favorite.."How many hours did it take you to drive here"? The correct answer is 12 hours by air! :o

When I was a very young girl, I thought that Holland was near Australia for some bizarre reason. However, a TV show (yes, an anime) enlightened me about it. In the show, the girl travels from France to Holland by train. And I was like "how in the world?"- and then I checked an atlas and saw that Holland was in Europe!!!!!

When I was little, my parents played a game with us every night. At least I thought it was a game...it was a geography lesson. We would spin the globe, close our eyes and put our our finger. Wherever our finger landed was the country we had to look up in the Encyclopedia and learn about that night.

I was very small when we started doing this, so needless to say, I learned the southern hemisphere before anything above the equator.

I thought I couldn't relate to this story because I was in a local group that affiliated with an NPC. We didn't cut a group for dumb reasons, but I totally remember opinions about colors, letters, symbols, etc. We had to choose between Kappa, Theta, and Delta Phi Epsilon. (D Phi E didn't end up presenting to us). I remember liking the way Theta's letters looked because the two K's in KKG looked weird. Oh, but I liked Kappa's colors better. :-P

I mean, I suppose you could drive from Alaska to Florida if you really wanted to...clearly some people should have watched/played Carmen Sandiego as children. And actually, you will need a passport soon to drive from Alaska to Florida since you have to go through Canada!

I'm glad I am not the only one who thinks Theta's letters are aesthetically pleasing.:)

I do, too! I also think Kappa Alpha Theta SOUNDS aesthetically pleasing... definitely rolls off of the tongue. Actually, Sigma Kappa is another one that I could say over and over again.

I'm just glad we don't have Phi Mu... before I knew what greek life really meant, I would have only wanted to be there because of the colors alone...

One of my chapter sisters would probably have wanted to go Phi Mu for the colors alone, if we'd had a chapter. I'm not sure if she actually owned any clothes that weren't some shade of pink. People called her "Fraulein Pinkpuff" behind her back.

I just have to say...YES! Our colors do rock! And honestly, it helped that not only did I love Phi Mu before recruitment but the colors were my absolute favorite!

hey hey hey...Pink is my *signature* color!!!

Then I guess it's a good thing we didn't have Tri-Sig or Sigma Kappa at Mason since I love purple, lol.

Hence your sorority affiliation! (ducks paintballs being fired by sageofages... the paintballs are pink, of course)

I've got nothing against pink, but I'm not exactly a member of the Fraulein Pinkpuff Fan Club.

SO true...same here..but i am IN LOVE with turquoise..thats my fave ;)

We had both, and I was sure to mention that purple was my favorite color at both houses. But, in the end, the Crimson and Pearl White won my heart.:p

I like pink too, but alas, no Phi Mu at Mason either... and I didn't come to love red until much after I joined Zeta (otherwise AOPi and A-Phi would have been contenders, had my decision been based on colors, lol).

Speaking of Mason, and in regard to fraternities, we have several members who joined us because they thought we were Phi Kappa Sigma during rush. I'm sure they have members with the opposite story.

I dropped one sorority because I was told they were snobby and extremely fixated on "looks"...and then two days later they came to lunch in these tiny black tanks tops that said "____: The Sorority" in pink letters. That sealed it for me. I feel slightly bad now, but on the other hand, we wouldn't exactly have been a good fit for each other anyway. They're nice girls, though. I dropped another group because I remembered them to be the girls giggling incessantly in the dorms in this pink jerseys at the beginning of school getting in the way and annoying the ever living hell out of me. Then their skit turned out to be able picking the right pair of shoes. That was the last nail in the coffin for me.

Obviously, I'm not a girlie girl.

I cut a sorority the first day because I absolutely could not stand their chapter room. It kind of reminded me of a country farm house kitchen. It had tile floors and small tables all over it. To top it of, everyone sat in those metal fold up chairs. The acoustics in the place drove me nuts! Just imagine those chairs scooting around and 70 girls chattering very loudly.

I'm glad where I ended up though! I have the BEST sisters!

If I had actually gone through FMR, that would have been a reason for me to pick Theta. :p

The scarlet and olive have grown on me. Our house letter shirts are red t-shirts with Kelly green letters on a white background, but a lot of people from other houses have come up to us and said that they're really cute. (They're just jealous because their house letter shirts are either white or navy and not bright, noticeable red. ;) )

Although, we had a couple cookie decorating events with some freshman dorms during finals and someone mentioned that it was really cute that we had letter shirts just for Christmas. :rolleyes:

I've noticed when the scarlet and olive are used in relatively equal amounts, it looks really Christmasy, but when there's a lot of one color and accents of the other, it doesn't look Christmasy at all, you just notice the pretty contrast.

I'm a Kappa Sigma and our chapter refuses to get red shirts. We were part of a rebuilding era of our chapter and there were only 5 actives. So the alumni got us these bright red shirts with white letters and a green outline. The ugliest shirts ever and we had to endure these once a week during pledging, needless to say when we went active we went crazy designing all these shirts that werent red. So because of the christmas thing we try to stay away from shirts that are dominantly red and green.

This is a great thread :) I went through recruitment as a first-semester freshman and so I used a lot of my random opinions during the process.

For example, I was afraid to go to Alpha Phi's house, because I was really confused about the pronunciation of the Phi.

When I told my mom (not Greek) about Delta Gamma, she said "Aren't sororities supposed to have three letters in their names?", which worried me. I also thought DG's colors looked like a baby shower.

Fortunately these first impressions didn't last and I am a very happy DG with many pink and blue trinkets in my room.

That's funny because I remember thinking it strange that AOII had three letters instead of two! I know that there are many more three lettered groups than two, but at the time, I only knew about KD, Phi Mu and SigmaK which were the only other groups on my campus!

Some of these are dumb reasons, some are not so dumb, but most of them are pretty amusing:

Tri-Delt: I dropped right away for two reasons. The first was that this was the ONLY house name I had heard of before rushing, and I had always heard "Need a date? Try Delta" or other, less savory variations. When I met the president of this house, I remember thinking "why on earth would you want to be president of the slutty house?" Mind you, I had ZERO real knowledge about my school's Greek system at the time. Also, their recruitment chair had the highest-pitched voice I've ever heard in my life. Painful.

KD: Their recruitment chair looked awkward and their president looked like a 35-year-old dowdy aunt.

Theta: The first girl I talked to just seemed ditzy. Whenever we discussed other schools I got into or the honors program I was in, she'd practically screech "Me too!" with really big eyes and way too much enthusiasm, and I strongly suspected she was lying. The next girl I talked to asked about Orange County (where I'm from) and commented on how many girls were from that city... ahem... it's a... county.

DG: My guide was clearly an athlete and I thought was going to tackle me with excitement when she heard I did track in high school. She then talked about ONLY sports-related sorority activities. She also had a raspy voice that I didn't like.

Chi-O:
Me (struggling with conversaion): So what made you join your house?
Chi-O: Well, I preffed DG, but they didn't take me, so now I'm here.


Things could have gone very differently, but I LOVE my house and am so happy I joined the right one!

not to mention you get bigger letters! :D

Zeta
 

At the age of 17, I wished Zeta had at least one "greek" or different looking letter.

I always envied Zeta's ability to use regular letters - they could get ANYTHING monogrammed!

i dropped a chapter during recruitment because there were 6 girls from my HS who were members and only one spoke to me during the round (she ended up being the recruitment VP).

i had 6 seniors drop out recently just because it was the "thing to do". all the reasons they put on their drop forms were superficial....ex...my best friend couldn't go to formal, the chapter has changed since i joined, the girl i wanted didn't get a bid.....etc. good riddens!

:D

riddance

Main Entry: rid·dance
Function: noun
Date: 1533
1 : an act of ridding
2 : deliverance relief —often used in the phrase good riddance especially to express relief that someone or something has gone

Me too, I was talking to one of my Zeta friends about gifts for our littles or paddles or something like that, and she was like, "Oh you can just get wooden letters at Michaels." Not if I want a Sigma! It must be great because you can get letters from anywhere, instead of just the Greek store.

Actually, you can use an M or W sideways for a Sigma! That's what we did all the time and it didn't look bad at all. Wait...maybe that won't work with another letter next to it because of the size/height differential...

You can also use an upside down L for the gamma if it is reversible.

This is a bit ironic because my maiden monogram was KKL.

Yeah, as long as the letters are more square and not elongated it works.

Are there A.C. Moore stores all over the country? They have Greek letters, paddles, crests and other wooden goodies.

Maybe I am just lucky because I've never had trouble finding Greek letters in craft stores. I recommend A.C. Moore though, especially if you are going to make a scrapbook for your little sister. They have sales frequently on all kinds of stuff. I actually found Greek letter stickers there and those have been impossible for me to find.

I chose mine cause my mom told me that if i pleged any other sorority she would disown me (needless to say im a legacy)... just goes to show that mommy knows best cause i am so happy with gamma phi and i can't ever picture myself with anyone else

If my mother said such a thing to me, I wouldn't even bother with the Greek system.

I feel sorry for any mother who feels the need to say such a thing to her daughter. :rolleyes:

It's great that you found your home in Gamma Phi and you and your mom can share in that sisterhood. That's not always the case with other legacies. They shouldn't feel the need to be an XYZ just because [insert family member here] is an XYZ.

Now, she could have been kidding. I've always told my daughters they can go ahead and break my heart and pledge something other than Gamma Phi. They KNOW I'm kidding, and that above all else I want them to be happy. If they can be happy and be the third generation to wear the crescent, even better, of course.

Oh, I definitely know that. But I have seen rush threads over the years where PNMs have shared that "mom and grandma are XYZs and if I'm not an XYZ too they'll disown me!"

I've also seen threads where a parent will tell their PNM kid they can join whatever sorority they want, but if it's not theirs, they refuse to pay for dues.

It's this kind of pressure that makes groups cutting legacies seems so harsh. The parents must not know what it's like these days and how many legacies get released.

I am glad you're happy with your choice... sometimes a legacy really fits with her legacy sorority.

One of my sisters (I'll call her "Rose") has an aunt who's an AEPhi. The aunt would only allow her daughters to apply to colleges that had an AEPhi chapter. None of the daughters actually joined AEPhi.

Meanwhile, Rose went to a school where there were four NPC chapters, none of them AEPhi. Long story short - she and six other Jewish women formed a local sorority, which I later pledged - and which is now a chapter of AEPhi.

Rose's aunt flew in for our AEPhi initiation. :D