One VERY Long Recruitment Story :)
 

Hey everyone! I just want to give y'all a little background info, since I'm pretty new here. I've been "lurking" for a month or so, but only signed up a few days ago. I really love the Panhellenic atmosphere on this site, and my favorite thing to read so far has been the Recruitment stories, so I thought I'd share mine. It's pretty long, complicated, and strung out, so bear with me here! I've already written it all up in Word, so I plan to be posting at least once a day, maybe more, depending on how bored I get during class and if you all want me to post more, haha.

I grew up in a small town where most of girls pledged a certain sorority we'll call RED. (I'm using colors to differentiate the sororities, by the way... I'm not terribly creative, and I figured it would be easiest to keep up with... but don't read too much into my color choices, because I'm picking them at complete random!). My mom pledged RED when she was in college, but left the sorority while on bad standing. I don't know a lot of details about what happened, except that it left a bad taste in her mouth for Greek Life. My aunt (who actually raised me) is a ORANGE alum, & that particular sorority happens to include nieces as legacies. Remember this-- it's important later!

I started college at a tiny little school about an hour away from home. It's considered pretty prestigious around here, but also has a reputation for being a party school. When I did my overnight visit in the spring of my Senior Year of high school, I completely clicked with the girl I stayed with. She happened to be the president of LIME, a sorority whose girls I quickly fell in love with. I knew a few of them from home already. Two other girls from my hometown were members of PURPLE. My aunt's sorority was also as this school, as was another group who we will call SLATE.

Several weeks before school started, I began to converse with other new students on Facebook. A question about Rush came up, and I mentioned that I really loved everyone I had met in LIME. Facebook at this point was still fairly new, so I didn't really take etiquette into consideration. Rush is deferred at this school just a few weeks, and until then, none of the actives are allowed to have any sort of contact with PNM's. However, word got around to me that the two actives from my town (keep in mind, it's VERY small) from PURPLE had seen the Facebook post and were really angry with me and had already said there was not a chance I would join their sorority. Um, yikes!

So, rush hadn't even begun and I already had sorority drama...

Okay, so now with all the boring background info out of the way, we can start the actual Rush story :) I kept a diary of this whole experience, so fortunately I have a pretty detailed account.

My roommate, who I'll call Alex, was pretty rebellious and completely anti-sorority, but she signed up for recruitment because I was doing it.

So the sororities at this school are:
ORANGE
SLATE
LIME
PURPLE

The first day was Open House, and we went to each of the sororities. Each sorority has a designated hall in lieu of houses, and for Open House they each had a different room on campus.

Alex & I were in the same Rho Gamma group. The first sorority we visited was PURPLE. I was absolutely terrified of their screaming and shouting! Our Rho Gamma had warned us it might be a little loud, but I still wasn't prepared. I saw the two girls from my hometown, and neither one acknowledged me. I started to feel a little sick-- I absolutely hate any sort of conflict, & it was killing me to know they thought that I didn't want to join their sorority, and even more so, it killed me to know that there was nothing I could say or do to let them know that I had simply made a very childish and naive mistake in posting that comment on a public website (for the record, the comment didn't say anything negative in the least. It was more along the lines of, "I'm so excited for recruitment, I already really love LIME!" Still naive, yes, but not negative in the least). Anyway, the girl who talked to me didn't seem to be very interested in anything I had to see and spent most of the party talking to Alex because they had a mutual friend. She did tell me that she knew who I was and that I had gone to high school with the other two girls. I left the party overwhelmed and confused.

My next stop was at LIME, and I couldn't have been more excited. Girl #1 from my hometown met me at the door and led me to a table. Girl #2 from my hometown stopped by to say hi, and brought the president over. I fell even more in love with the girls during this round. They were all so bubbly and excited to see us, and really made me feel special. I left the party knowing this is where I wanted to be.

Next up was SLATE. I had heard they didn't have a very strong membership, but I was met at the door by one of my orientation leaders, and she introduced me to several of her sisters. Their philanthropy was something that I really care about, and I LOVED their mascot. The next girl I talked to gave me a really weird vibe, though-- almost like she was kind of angry that she had to be there. I left with pretty mixed feelings about this sorority. On the one hand, I loved my orientation leader and the philanthropy, but on the other hand, the second girl was kind of awkward and they didn't have the best reputation on campus (don't judge me too harshly, I was 18 and admittedly very immature/naive!).

My last stop was at the sorority I was a legacy to, ORANGE. I had heard very little about them since I had been on campus. I was met at the door by the cutest blonde girl. She really reminded me of a Barbie doll, and that's even what I wrote down in my rush diary that night. They had some of the best decorations I had seen, and a very cute song. I really liked the girls, and they made me feel special because they only had one other legacy that year (I found this out later), but I still felt like LIME was home. Of course, I had two more nights to go...


At the end of the night, I didn't have too much trouble ranking them. My sheet looked like this:

1. LIME
2. ORANGE
3. PURPLE
4. SLATE

We could go back to three sororities the next day.

I am ready for the next post!

I'm hooked...more please?

Agreed. If it's already written...can you just post one section every five minutes? That would be great. Thanks.

Oh, but what fun would that be?? :p

I'll post more often... I do have to go in and change the colors into html codes-- is that what it's called? Whatever, y'all know what I mean! So that does take a little bit of time to sit down and do, but at the moment I'm a bored college student, sooo expect a new post shortly!

Our recruitment took place in the evenings, so I had a very long day of class before I got my schedule for the night.

Alex & I sat in a corner and opened our papers together. We had both listed the exact same sororities in the exact same order, so we were pretty confident we would have similar schedules.

Alex's face immediately dropped when she opened hers. She had really loved ORANGE the night before. Her schedule only listed PURPLE and SLATE.

I opened mine next, and surprise surprise-- PURPLE had cut me. However, although I was disappointed, I was also excited because I had a full schedule with the other three sororities, and I did get asked back to my top two favorites. Mostly, I was just frustrated over such silly drama. I later learned that PURPLE and LIME are huge competitors and rivals, which explains why they took such offense to my Facebook post.

On this night, we were to visit the sorority halls. The first one I visited was ORANGE. Since all of the halls are in the same dorm (and it's a very small dorm, at that), you could hear the other sororities cheering and clapping. ORANGE was one of the smaller two sororities on campus, and they didn't seem as enthusiastic as the others did. I was still excited to visit them, though, especially since I had such a great experience there the night before. This time, I was met at the door by a Junior who co-taught my "Freshman Experience" class. I hadn't even realized she was in ORANGE until the previous night. Not only was she an ORANGE sister, she was also Recruitment chair, so she was able to talk to me a lot about leadership positions (something that was/is very important to me). We had an okay chat, but I still just didn't feel like the sisters were being very enthusiastic. They were very nice to me, and they all asked about my aunt's experience in ORANGE, but overall, I felt a little letdown, considering how wonderful I felt the night before.

Next stop was LIME. This time, I was picked up by Girl #1's big sister. You could hear the LIME'S over all of the other sororities, and I was blown away by how excited they were. Tonight, their decorations were the best, and I talked to so many sisters, I couldn't keep them all straight. Some of the girls talked about "when" I was a LIME instead of "if" I joined LIME, and being the super analytical person I am, I took that to mean I was definitely getting a bid.

Last stop of the night was the SLATE hallway. You could hardly hear them at all over everyone else's screams, but they looked like they were having a little more fun this night. Nothing particular stuck out about them this night, other than I talked to a sweet girl who I hadn't known before and that her bedroom was decorated really cute.

I had an easy time ranking them, again. Tomorrow night, we would go from three sororities to two for Pref night.

I ranked:
LIME
ORANGE

Basically, my opinions hadn't changed very much from the night before. I thought a little less of ORANGE, but I already knew where I was headed, anyway, so it didn't really matter. If nothing else, I figured I would come out of this whole experience with a bunch of wonderful LIME sisters and some new friends in ORANGE and SLATE.

Stay tuned! I'm headed out for the night, so I won't be back until tomorrow.

P.S. I know my school(s) (consider that a hint) are pretty obvious, and I don't really care if you know where I am, but I'd really like to keep it a surprise until the end for the people who haven't figured it out. Thanks :)

:) Loving this story AND how quickly it is moving!

Oops! I did rank them... I put them last. I didn't mean to leave them off, thanks for catching that!

Can we have the rest?! I loveee your story and I want to know your school!

You seriously need to chill. She said she was headed out and wouldn't be back until tomorrow.

hm.

Eeeks, sorry. I hadn't realized :confused:

^Props to you for keeping your cool on GC whenever flamed

You must be kinda new here if you think those are flames.

I'd be scared if someone said that to me haha!

really?

Hi! Sooo I haven't even been near a computer all day, and figured y'all would be ready to hang me by now! Thanks for hanging in their with me, haha.

I had another sleepless night and full day of classes before Pref Night. Everything about this night was different. I remember very clearly what I wore-- a black strapless dress that tied in the back with a bow, and black peep toe heels with my grandmother's pearls.

Pref ceremonies at our campus were actually held off campus, with buses to take us to the locations. The year I went through was the last year they did things that way. None of the PNM's knew where we were actually headed to, although we were (fairly) certain that we weren't going too far (and we were right-- most sororities stayed within two or three miles of the school).

Instead of the usual slips of paper with our schedules printed on them, we got real invitations. It was obvious that the sororities put a lot of time into writing our names in calligraphy. It added a really personal touch.

I was relieved to see I had two different invitations, as did Alex. She had been worried about getting cut from either sorority, since she only had two left.

I opened my first envelope at the same time that Alex opened hers.

"The sisters of ORANGE cordially invite you to our preference ceremony."

I still felt a little sick. I didn't really care about ORANGE at this point. I had a one track mind for LIME, and felt sure that the girls loved me as much as I loved them (that sounds so much snottier than I mean for it to, haha).

I dropped my ORANGE invitation and tore open the other one as quickly as I could. I was relieved, though not necessarily surprised to read:

"The sisters of LIME cordially invite you to attend our preference ceremony." I could have cried, I was so excited. Alex was excited to be asked back to both PURPLE and SLATE, though we were disappointed that we had no chance of being sisters.

We each boarded a bus to take us to our ceremony. My first stop was ORANGE. To my relief, the bus stopped at a historic church downtown. I think I half expected to be dropped off in the middle of a forest somewhere. All of the PNM's in our dressiest clothes filed off the bus and waited outside. And waited, and waited, and waited. It was forever before our Rho Gamma's escorted us inside the building, where we lined up in alphabetical order just as we had every other night. Finally, the doors opened and a line of ORANGE'S came out to meet us, one by one. I was greeted by my freshman experience leader. She handed me an envelope and a flower, and took me to a table. She explained that inside this flower was a pledge pin, and that nothing would make her prouder than to see me wearing it. She said that I could carry it around for the night, but that I had to give it back before I left and I could have it back during my pledge experience. She sounded so certain that I actually would be pledging that I started to believe I would, too. Then she handed me the envelope and told me it was a letter she had written to me. I opened it and read some of the sweetest words about friendship, sisterhood, and how she saw so many ORANGE qualities in me. I got a little emotional reading it, and so did she. She took the card back and said that I could have it when I pledged, too. The seniors gave speeches, and there was soooo much crying. I felt really touched by it all. One girl I had talked to earlier in the week came up to me and told me that I had been her "rush crush" all week, and that she couldn't wait to see me run out to them on Bid Day in ORANGE colors. We also participated in a candlelight ceremony outside in the courtyard, where all of the sisters sang and held arms with us. It wasn't long before I had to hand over my flower and pin and board the bus for my next stop: LIME. I left feeling really touched and so terribly confused. My head said that ORANGE was the right choice, but my heart was saying LIME. I really hoped the next pref ceremony would clear things up.


Several minutes later, the other PNM's in my group and I were at the LIME house on a neighboring campus. It's a truly beautiful house, definitely one of the nicest on this particular campus. Once again, we waited and waited before we were allowed inside. I was met at the door by Girl#1 from my hometown. She got a few things to eat (I didn't-- I had heard horror stories about girls who got cut for taking too much food. Ridiculous, but remember how naive I was). She told me all about how important her sisters were to her, and how she already felt like I belonged there, and how she couldn't wait to put her letters on me on Bid Day. And then, fate intervened. I had one of those moments that can only be attributed to exhaustion and confusion-- a total word vomit moment, for all of you who have seen "Mean Girls." She asked me where else I had preffed, and I told her. She remembered hearing that I was a legacy there (still not really sure how she knew this, because I never told her). And then she asked me if I had made a decision about which one I wanted to choose. I told her that I really, really loved the ceremony at ORANGE and that I was really confused about where I wanted to be, although I knew that LIME was still my favorite. I have no idea why I told her this. I guess exhaustion and stress and nerves make me completely honest. She got a funny look on her face, but didn't say much else. I knew immediately that I had said something wrong, but I tried to cover my tracks by repeating how much I loved her and how I wanted nothing more than to be a LIME. I didn't write much else about the ceremony there. I remember all of the girls singing to us, but overall, it wasn't really as sentimental as the ceremony at ORANGE had been.

When we left, we were told to be completely silent. Not so much as a whisper was allowed for several hours while we waited to rank the chapters for the last time. Only one computer lab was opened, with something like 12 computers in it, so it took a really long time to get all of the girls through. Meanwhile, I had a long heart to heart with my Rho Gamma about my dilemma. Even though I 110% wanted to be in LIME, I had also fallen in love with ORANGE and was afraid they would hate me if I didn't pledge them. She assured me that this wasn't the case, and eventually I made it to a computer rank.

I selected LIME first, followed by ORANGE.

Alex told me later that she had similar feelings about PURPLE and SLATE... she felt a really strong pull to both groups, although [COLOR="rgb(47, 79, 79)"]SLATE'S[/COLOR] ceremony had touched her a little more. She eventually ranked PURPLE first, and SLATE second, but her reasoning was that PURPLE was a much more prestigious group. More about that is later in the story...

I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach all night long. I just felt really uneasy about the whole thing. Our Rho Gamma was supposed to bring our bids to our room no later than 8 the next morning, so we got very little sleep that night.


Bid Day comes tomorrow!! Sorry to make y'all wait again, but I've got lots of family things to do tomorrow, so it may be late again before I get to a computer. Thanks for being patient with me. :)

Ohhhmygosh, the drama! The decisions! Love your story though.

ugh!! i wish we didn't have to wait! i'm so nervous to hear what happens (even though thi totally isnt live haha!)

Looking forward to your next post!

Ooh sounds so good. I can't wait to see your next post.

Alex and I both woke up on bid day at 6 am. We had absolutely nothing to do, so we both took showers, straightened our hair, then decided we both wanted to curl it, and finally ended up straightening it again... and then we still had an hour to kill. I honestly think that last hour may have been one of the longest in my life! 8:00 came and went, and still no knock. We were under strict orders not to leave until we had our bid, so we couldn't even roam around and see if anyone else had received theirs yet. It was 8:30 when we FINALLY got that knock. She tripped over my legs to get to the door, where our Rho Gamma stood holding two envelopes. She handed them to us, and we opened them together. Alex opened hers to find an invitation to join PURPLE. I was a little disappointed, given my bumpy start with them. My hands were shaking so bad that I had a little trouble getting my envelope open, but it didn't really matter, because with the first tear of the envelope, I saw all I needed to see....

























...the sorority colors of ORANGE. My legacy chapter. The one I wasn't supposed to join, my runner-up sorority. I didn't even bother reading the rest of my bid. I think a part of me had known during pref that I wasn't going to join LIME. Of course, they say hindsight is 20/20, so who knows? My Gamma Chi had already congratulated Alex, so she pulled me outside and hugged me and asked me if I was okay. I didn't want her to see my disappointment. I knew I had to just suck it up and live with ORANGE. I celebrated with Alex for a little while-- I think she could tell I was hurt, but very wisely chose not to push me for more information. I went to a private little nook at the end of our hall and called my aunt, the same one who was an ORANGE herself. I couldn't even get the words out. I can't even describe the mixture of emotions-- anger and hurt towards LIME, sadness that the sorority I had wanted for so long had rejected me, but also so much relief that at least I finally knew where my new "home" was, and also excitement because I knew that the girls of ORANGE really did love me, and I had really grown to care about them, as well. I also remember feeling so much guilt for being so bitterly disappointed. I wanted to want to be an ORANGE; I just couldn't.

I calmed my nerves and talked things through with my aunt, who suggested I at least go through pledging. COB/Snap Bidding, or whatever you want to call it was very rare at our school, and wasn't even an option for me, so we decided the best thing to do would be to be a "big girl" and go through pledging, which was a semester long (apparently a school rule, because all of the sororities are like that).

Bid Day consists of girls wearing jeans and a white t-shirt, then lining up with all of the other new sorority members in a huge old building on campus. Outside the building, all of the sororities are gathered, wearing ridiculous outfits and make-up and screaming and chanting while they wait for the new girls to "run out." Which is actually what bid day is called-- "run out." The new girls in their white t-shirts run out one by one to their new sorority, who has no idea which new girls it got. When the new girl runs into the crowd of her new sorority, she is met with girls who "shirt" her with her letters and often cover her with silly string and glitter and all sorts of craziness. It's a really fun tradition. A lot of family members come to watch, too. In my case, my aunt and uncle were there, as well as my mom and stepdad. There was so much excitement in the air, but I felt like crying. I wanted to be running out to LIME, not ORANGE. Hearing LIME'S shouts and cheers certainly wasn't making me feel any better. So as soon as I lined up outside and spotted my family, I started crying. With tears streaming down my face, I ran into the arms of ORANGE. I got my new jersey and hugs from everyone... I thought I would suffocate in the middle of their large group. They either didn't notice my tears, or were gracious enough to not mention it. I hope more than anything that they just didn't notice....




Bid Day Part 2, coming early tomorrow morning/late tonight :)

Wow!

You're a great story-teller:) I'm really loving reading this.

ditto

I'm hooked.

First off: thanks for all the great comments :)

Now, back to bid day!


Most of the girls I had grown closest to pledged PURPLE or LIME. I knew very few of the ORANGE new members. I tried to stick with the older ORANGE girls that I had gotten to know during rush, including my freshman experience leader. We went to our bid day picnic and played a few games and such, but I was so overwhelmed with different emotions that I just couldn't really be social with my new sisters.

We had a week or so before we had our formal pledging ceremony. We had some sort of fun activity planned every single night until then... movie nights, dinner nights, ORANGE only dance parties on the sorority hall, etc. I went to every single event, hoping I would finally click with someone else in my pledge class and start to feel like I belonged here. Instead, the only girls I really felt comfortable with were a few of the seniors. Most of the girls in my pledge class were all friends before rush even began, and had decided to all join ORANGE together... one of the biggest disadvantages to deferred recruitment, in my opinion. I know very little about deferred recruitment at larger schools, but at our school, where the total student population is around 1,200 (smaller than my high school), I think it makes things harder on the PNM's. Of course, that's just my humble opinion! I really just felt like an outsider in my pledge class. Looking back, the fact that I bonded so quickly with the seniors probably didn't help much, either.

I still wanted so much to fall in love with my new sorority. My aunt gave me a few of her old t-shirts and such, and promised to be at initiation to pin me with her badge. I probably would have given up a lot sooner if I hadn't wanted so badly to be a member of the same wonderful group of girls that she loved so much.

The day of my formal pledging ceremony, I was absolutely sick. I knew I didn't want to be an ORANGE. I had been hoping and waiting all week for something to fall into place, for things to click, and for me to finally feel like I was home-- but it never happened. An hour before the ceremony, I tracked down the president (one of the seniors I had so quickly fallen in love with) and told her my concerns. To be honest, I don't even remember most of our conversation. I think I was so nervous and on edge that I just rambled on and on. Eventually, I told her that I didn't think I could go through the ceremony. It wouldn't be fair to ORANGE, and it wouldn't be fair to me. I hadn't sought her out for conversation with the intention of quitting, but ultimately, that's exactly what I did.

First and foremost, I want to explain why I chose to quit so early on in my pledging: for one thing, I had done a lot of soul searching that week and decided that I wanted to explore my options at another school. This had nothing to do with sororities-- the school I was at had never been my first choice school. I had been pressured into going there by my father, who cared more about prestige than he did my happiness. All along, I had hoped that joining a sorority would "fix" things for me there. That's a pretty big expectation to pin on any sorority! Secondly, I want to add that I have more respect for ORANGE than you can imagine. They truly are/were a classy group of women. BUT... have you ever just met someone and not really "clicked" with them? I've used that word a lot in this story, but like I've said before, I'm no English major, haha, so I can't think of a better way to put it. Anyway, just because I didn't really feel like myself with them doesn't mean they are any less wonderful-- it just means that I wasn't right for them, or vice versa.



Sooo... that's my recruitment story, Part 1. I'm not an ORANGE. I'm not a LIME. And two years later, I'm no longer a student at that school. So believe me when I tell you that things got interesting after I de-pledged from ORANGE. I transferred the next semester to a school right down the street with literally 40 times as many students, and 3 times as many sororities. Part Two, School Two-- coming soon! :)

As the story turns....

Very fun story! Thank you for taking the time to share it with us! :)

Looking forward to the next installment...

Wow! Thank you for your story. I can't wait to see what happened!

Part 2...

My new school is less than 2 miles away from my old school, separated by Main Street. Each side of Main Street is pretty much an entirely different world. The side that my "new" school is on is very much college town central, while the other side of Main Street tends to be more residential. Main Street is lined with bars and such. The two schools absolutely can not be any more different: school #1 (the school you've read about thus far) is very small (like I said before, around 1200 students total) and prestigious. Thomas Jefferson once taught there, and Henry Clay is a graduate. A lot of the students are pretty "old money" and most of them are from in-state. School #2 is an SEC school, huge on sports, and has somewhere around 40,000 students. Both schools have really great Greek Life (school #1 is actually rated number 4 in the country for Greek Life, though with a total of 8 GLO's who are paired up with one sorority to one fraternity pretty much exclusively, I can't say I agree with that ranking... not to say it's not a great Greek Life, just not sure it warrants a rank of fourth best greek system in the country). My draw to school #2 is definitely its variety of activities and diversity of students. Plus, I'm a MAJOR SEC football/basketball fan... let the flames begin :) haha

I just wanted y'all to have that background so you can understand what a culture shock it was for me to go through rush at both schools. I can't stress enough how different sorority life is at each place!

School #2 had 12 sororities when I went through recruitment, and three of them are also at school #1. ORANGE is not at school #2 (yet... ;)) but SLATE, PURPLE, and LIME all are. What's kind of interesting to me is that they all three have similar reputations at both schools, although as far as I can tell, they don't often interact with their chapter at the other school. Haha.. sorry if I made that last paragraph really confusing for you. Once again, just trying to provide some background!

Okay, so the 12 sororities at school #2 (in the order that I think of them, nothing specific) are:

SLATE
PURPLE
LIME
RED
YELLOW
PINK
NAVY
BLUE
TURQUOISE
LAVENDER
MAROON
TEAL


Remember that most of the women in my super small hometown were in RED... many of them are alums of this very same chapter. I actually have five older cousins who are RED, and four of them are currently in college. So I started recruitment with a pretty good knowledge of what RED, SLATE,
PURPLE, and LIME are all about. I had no shortage of rec's for RED (I actually had to tell some people to not send in a rec for me to them, because I didn't want to be "that girl who sent in 15 rec's, haha), plus several rec's for PINK, and one each for every sorority except SLATE, PURPLE, and NAVY. Needless to say, I exhausted every resource I had to get rec's! I felt like a fish out of water going through SEC recruitment. Although I had gone through rush at School #1 the year before, I still felt completely unprepared.


The first rounds (Open House) were split between two days, so we went to six sororities the first day, and six the second day, and we didn't rank until the end of the second day. This made it a little bit hard because it's next to impossible to remember details to differentiate the first house of the first day from everywhere else.

Every PNM wears the same shirt to the Open House rounds, and I paired mine with denim skirts and Sperry's both days. I made a friend immediately, who we'll call Emily. It was pretty apparent that Emily came from a lot of money (Her graduation present? a brand new BMW SUV. Yeah.)

Our first days schedule looked like this:

SLATE
PURPLE
YELLOW
NAVY
BLUE
TURQUOISE



SLATE: Reminded me sooo much of the girls from SLATE at school #1. This group is definitely one of the smaller groups on campus, but it didn't really seem it during Open House. I got a vibe from this group that they weren't a very close sisterhood, though.

PURPLE: Okay, so remember that this is the same group that I had a few, ahem, issues with at School #1. They are one of the largest groups on campus, actually at both campuses, so I was very nervous. I knew I was really supposed to like this group, if I listened to "tent talk," but honestly, I just didn't really see myself here. They seemed very athletic, which is something I definitely am not. They are responsible for one of the biggest philanthropy events on campus, which is very cool, but overall, I left feeling a little unimpressed.

YELLOW: Girls, this sorority is one of the very best examples of why tent talk is wrong! All I heard from the other PNM's was about how this sorority was about to get kicked off campus, and how they were really awkward, etc. When I went to their house, the first thing I noticed was that they all looked genuinely happy to be there. Yes, there weren't very many of them, but the ones who were
there seemed to be really wonderful girls. I left feeling very, very impressed.

NAVY: Another campus powerhouse, according to the other PNM's. They had a wonderful skit, and were all absolutely stunning girls. I didn't see a single girl there who couldn't have been a model, if she wanted to. I had a pretty good conversation with my girl, but I didn't necessarily feel very strongly about them either way. It was one of those situations where I knew I would love to be asked back, but it wouldn't be the end of the world if I wasn't.

BLUE: I had heard that this sorority was known for it's partying antics. The girl who picked me up at the door was really sweet. We had a very long discussion about "The Hills" (lol) and then she brought me back to the living room for their skit. I really loved their skit (it was about something that is no doubt one of my favorite things ever), and I found out that their philanthropy is one of my favorite causes. I really enjoyed this house.

TURQUOISE: To be honest, I don't remember a lot about this house, except that it was at the very end of the day and I was exhausted and sweaty from walking around all day in 90 degree heat/200% humidity, haha. I met a girl who was in the same Astronomy class as me, and had a few good conversations, but it was obvious that both PNM's and sorority members just wanted this party to be over. This was another sorority that I didn't really have strong feelings for, either way.


So, with day 1 finished, and BLUE was my overall favorite. I liked the idea of having a smaller sisterhood with YELLOW, but talk of them getting kicked off campus worried me (I know, I know... tent talk is BAD).

Day 2 will be here very soon. I'm curious as to whether or not you all have any favorites so far?

Day 2

I was more excited to begin Day 2 because I was anxious to get to LIME and PINK. Sooo here we go!


LAVENDER: When we walked in this house, I immediately noticed that every single girl had on what appeared to be a Lilly Pulitzer headband. Another girl (Claire.. she and I had a lot of the same houses throughout the week) and I were double-rushed, so I asked our rusher about their headbands. She gave me a really strange look, and said "I have no idea who that even is," then proceeded to focus most of her attention on Claire. Okaaaaaay. I was caught off-guard by their cheer, too. I didn't get the best impression from this house, but attributed it to the fact that our rusher and I just didn't mesh well.

MAROON: Another house that doesn't really stand out in my mind. I remember feeling kind of blah about it. The second girl who talked to me was really nice, and had just gotten home from five months in Europe, which fascinated me.

TEAL: I loved this house from the moment I stepped in the door. The girls were very bubbly and outgoing. Their house is one of five on campus that isn't built like the other sororities'. They had one of the coolest skits, also. I could very much see myself here!

LIME: Oh, LIME! I was both nervous and excited for this house. When I started talking to the girl who had picked me up, she told me she had pledged/initiated at School #1 and transferred to School #2 last year, also. I was absolutely blown away! I still don't know if she was intentionally paired with me (I had made no mention of my experience at school #1 to anyone at all... I kind of wanted to keep it a secret). I really liked these girls, but I was still feeling a little bit scarred from School #1, and talking to that girl didn't really help matters. Mostly, I just felt confused about this house.

PINK: I had three rec's for this house, so I was very anxious to see what they were like. I wasn't disappointed! All of the girls seemed to be very different from each other, yet they all seemed REALLY close. They had a cute skit, and the girl I talked to was wonderful. I was very impressed/excited about this house.

RED: Another house I was excited to visit, because I had so many connections to it. However, I had heard that they had struggled a few years ago. With it being the last house, I was exhausted again, and the girl who picked me up seemed a little distracted. She took me to the basement, which was very loud, and we had to yell to hear each other. I really loved the next girl I talked to, and they had a cute skit. I left with a positive impression, if not a great one.



RANKINGS

This was the night where we ranked all of the houses, so my sheet looked like this:

1.BLUE
1.PINK
1.TEAL
1. LAVENDER
1. RED
1. NAVY
1. YELLOW
1. LIME
1. TURQUOISE
2. SLATE
3. MAROON
4. PURPLE


Just as a note, my "number one's" aren't really in a specific order. 2, 3, and 4 are.

I'm feeling the love for yellow, but then again, I tend to root for the underdogs. ;)

wildcat10, you have a real talent for enthralling your audience - keep it up!

And I'm making no choices until I hear about all twelve! ;)




LOL, I have a picture of my brother much like that - only with just one hand on the ledge, the other in his back pocket, getting more chalk for his hands!

Makes perfect and complete sense to me. I'll never understand it, but it's just the way it is there. Can't wait to read the rest of your story!

Man, you weren't kidding when you said it was a long story! Can't wait to hear how things go the second time around!

Okay, I thought I knew pretty much everything there was to know about Thomas Jefferson. But this doesn't seem to fit. Does somebody want to PM me? Pretty please?

I could have sworn Henry Clay was self taught.