rush week disaster
 

i rushed this week and on pref night i got my top 1 sorority and my last choice (which i really didnt want). today bid day was supposed to be one of the happiest days of my life and ended up being one of the most painful. i opened my bid card and it was the sorority i didnt want.i'm really upset and i haven't been able to stop crying. :(

It's hard to get your second choice. However, you've got it now and there's nothing you can do to change that. You can either keep being upset and decide to drop out, or you can get over it and give the sorority that wanted you as a member a chance. Yes, it may be difficult for you to get over the heartbreak of not being picked by your first choice (rejection and narcissistic injury are a big deal at age 17/18), but if you decide to quit, you are stil bound to that sorority for a calendar year and cannot join any other group. Why not give your pledge period a chance and see if you could be happy there after all?* If you aren't having fun after a few weeks, you can depledge before initiation. It's either that or you won't be greek for at least another year, and you may or may not be able to get a bid from another chapter next year. At many schools, the odds of a successful recruitment decrease significantly each consecutive year.

*But if you're going to go to the chapter and be pouty and miserable that you didn't get the other chapter you wanted, don't bother. Don't bring down all the sisters and the other new members who are excited to be a part of your new chapter.

My biggest advice: don't make any decision on it while you're still this upset.

Take some deep breaths. Relax.

There's some really good advice in this thread, too. I really suggest reading it. Plenty of people on GC have gotten their 2nd choice and shared their stories/wisdom here:

http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/sh...ghlight=Advice

How sad that you consider getting a bid that YOU put on your card a disaster :mad:

YOU KNEW YOU DIDN'T WANT TO JOIN THIS CHAPTER and signed the card anyway? What a waste.

If you had such strong feelings that you would not want to be a member of this chapter, why in the world did you take the place away from another girl who would have loved to be a member? If your feelings were this strong, it is my personal opinion that you should have gone with single intention preference (suicide). Now that you have done it, I agree that you should give it a try instead of walking away a quitter, but only if you can honestly be a positive member.

Maybe this will be a learning experience & you will make better decisions in the future.

sigma kappa, your sorority was my first choice. I already rejected the bid anyways :/

well it works a little different in my school. i kept dropping the sorority i got a bid from every single night. but they kept calling me back until pref night. i didn't take anything away from anyone, i knew from the start i didn't want them. i didn't accept the bid anyways

you never dropped them actually

If you knew from the start you didn't want them, why did you put them on your pref card?

Newsflash: It doesn't work differently at your school. It's the same everywhere. Just because you ranked them last doesn't mean you "dropped" them. You ranked them last, but they saw something in you that the other sororities didn't, including your first choice. And yes, there's a chance you DID take something away form someone. For all you know, there are girls who went without any bids and would love to have your bid to your last choice chapter.

Shame on you. Now you are bound to that bid for one year, which means no COBing or informal rush. Had you only put your top choice on your pref card, and still did not receive a bid, you would have been eligible to take a bid someplace else at a later time.

Um, you don't get a bid every night - you only get a bid on bid day. You get invitations every day after first round.

If you didn't put a sorority on your pref card you could NOT have received a bid from them during formal recruitment. Shenanigans, perhaps?

It is a big disappointment to not get the chapter that you had your heart set on. However, GC is full of women who gave their second and third choices a chance and never regretted a minute of it.

I hate to be a PNM jumping in on a PNM situation, but I feel a strong need to say:

As someone who knows the feeling of being completely dropped from the whole process, posts like this make me feel a little sad.

I spent a lot of time convincing friends to give their new Greek homes a shot. I'm glad that many of them are doing just that, because, as I've read a million times on GC, you were selected for that house for a reason.

Anyway, I really don't like being the PNM who gets in the way of other PNMs, but still, I know what it's like to get "the" phone call, and it totally stinks, no matter how the story ultimately ends. It's a shame that some other girl got the phone call and couldn't receive a bid, while the OP has just given up her bid without even giving the new home a chance.

vivalacutie, i am sorry that things didn't work out for you. you kept having to go back to the sorority you did not want to return to, because the middle two sororities did not invite you back.

I think we need to cut her some slack on placing the undesired sorority on her bid list. this is probably another instance of the rho gamma/panhellenic that they HAVE to put all the sororities where they attended pref. parties on their card, or their card would be spit out by the computer and they would end up with no sorority.

Some people are being really nasty when I think the girl could have been misinformed...

The same exact thing happened to me where pref day rolled around and I had my first and last choices. My RC told me to put both on my bid card even though I told her flat out I wouldn't want a bid from my last choice. She told me "putting the other one on there will give you a better chance at getting your first choice". So I listened to her. That and when they were going over all the rules regarding signing the card, they said "dont worry about reading it, just sign the bottom, it's nothing important".

Now that it's a new year I'm really pushing all my friends who are interested to learn as much as they can about the process before hand so that the same thing doesn't happen to them (and I'll be going through it again as well after waiting a year). Things happen, be sad for a little, but don't keep a chip on your shoulder the whole year because of it. Because if you decide to try again next year, they probably will remember you, and you don't want to be remembered for being a "moody macy" who held a grudge all last year.

Very good post for a newbie! Welcome to GC and good luck on your next recruitment!

Anyone who tells you to not read the fine print should be strung up by their fingernails. Here's your life lesson of the day - the more anyone says that to you the more carefully you should read it. The fact that they're trying to hurry you along is no excuse.

so you're not a chi omega? your name gc name made me think that you were.

no, she's just kiss hug starr. :)

This could be true, depending on how quota additions work at your school. If you only put one chapter down, you would not have been eligible for quota additions. Because you put both, you were eligible. If your QAs are based on your preference, then you could have matched to your first choice as a QA if both chapters had already filled their pledge classes before you were placed.

*Note: This is what I wrote to another cry-baby PNM in another thread. This is how I feel and I have no problem expressing that.

Boo-Hoo! Get over it! These ladies chose you and you are being really unfair to them. There are other girls who would LOVE to have what you have right now. Get OFF the computer and go spend time with these ladies. This is just shameful.

she already rejected the bid

Oh, then let me rephrase. You missed out on Greek life because you thought you were "too good" for the sisterhood that wanted you. Thank you for rejecting the bid and not bringing down the rest of your pledge/ new member class. I stand by the "boo-hoo" though.

^^ correct. I thought that was potentially a bad idea after making my username but figured since it was lowercase I could get by. I use the same username on other (non-greek) forum sites too.

THIS IS WHAT I MEAN WHEN I SAY YOU CHEW GIRLS OUT EITHER WAY! Listing all groups or not listing all groups you preffed. Either way, we don't like what she did.

You are being deliberately obtuse by ignoring every other response to you on the matter.

Stop being the politeness police (or continue and watch people not give a shit.)

No, I'm just pointing out that either way, a PNM didn't do the right thing. But go ahead and make a bitch comment because thats all you do :)

You're really boring. And misogynistic.

I know im totes a part of the patriarchy!

Agreed. The issue is generally that they're coming back and complaining about the results even though they SHOULD have known better. The question is, whether they're really being educated so they DO know better.

So does making bitch comments about bitch comments make someone part of the circle jerk of bitchiness? Or is there some kind of exception for blinding idiocy?

probs :)

I know that today's system of rushee's ranking their choices, then invitation lists being generated based on invitations is efficient, and ultimately provides the same result as actually handing the rushee all of the invitations she received and letting her sort through them. However, the less efficient system made it VERY clear that the dynamic of "mutual selection" consisted of sororities issuing invitations and rushees responding to those invitations.

In the dark ages, we were called to the Rush Counsellor's room one by one, and little cards with the names of the sororities that invited us to the next round were handed to us. If Toppa Toppa Heap did not invite you to round 2, there was no little card from them.

It was easy to see, for example, that I was invited to THESE TEN that I held in my own little hands, and NOT invited to the two that were missing. From those ten, I chose which 6 to attend for round two.

It was very clear in that system that the only "Cuts" you could make were in those rounds when your physical invites exceeded the number of parties you could attend. It was a visual, concrete reality that helped educate us on what was actually happening. I think it also fostered gratitude for those invitations rather than annoyance. THESE were your invitations--- period. Your name was handwritten on the card by someone in that sorority, and they were inviting you into their home.

Ranking encourages rushees to think they will never see their lower ranked chapters again. But if those are the chapters that are inviting them back, they will!!

You went through rush under the same system I did. I personally see no reason to rank the chapters each day, I prefer getting the invites and then make the decision which ones I want to attend should have have more invites than parties. Several times my feelings changed from bad to not so bad during the night as I had time to think about the events of the day.

DaffyKD

I was in the same situation and I agree with you 100%.

My roommate is in a sorority (as are almost all of my friends) and she always tells me how much she "hates" it and I always just roll my eyes. So many girls would love to be in your place! Even though you said that you didn't accept the bid, I really wish you would have... There were a few houses I didn't like and I put them at the bottom of my list on the first day we voted and now I wish I would've put them up higher after meeting so many of the great girls I have met that are members! You should have given them a chance...

The problem with that sort of system is that there are chapters that women won't want to look at or accept an invite from because of tent talk and erroneous reputations.

The current ranking system isn't the problem, it's the Greek life offices, Panhellenics and Rho Chis who don't explain it correctly. They need to make it crystal clear that PNMS CANNOT CUT CHAPTERS. The problem is no one wants to come out and say that because they're afraid of being politically incorrect.