Symphony
 

What do you think is the hardest part of the Symphony to live up to - for you personally or your chapter?

I think for my chapter (and perhaps for myself) it was always to "without bitterness or defeat meet misfortune." Things didn't always go our way and we rather resigned ourself to it. I am personally stubborn enough not to meet misfortune with defeat much, but I do have a tendency toward being bitter.

"An appreciation of real merit and worth, steadfastness of soul."

It was all too easy in college to throw over the really decent guys, who often were in the smaller chapters, for the ones who just looked really good and belonged to the hottest house. And by the same token, it was sometimes hard to appreciate our own great qualities as a chapter when they got overshadowed by a sub-stellar performance in recruitment, and we started looking at the Quota chapters and trying to emulate them in their often less-than-worthy qualities. Even now, this is still difficult: I think I can more easily appreciate truly decent people, but it's still hard not to confuse money and position with "real merit and worth" -- even though I'd like to think it'd be easy!

"to share both joy and sorrow and bring into living reality, the SISTERHOOD of women". I recently quit A Xi D because of this. It is a problem that my chapter has. They would rather look good for a fraternity that a group of them are groupies for than to care about and support a sister. That isn't what I signed up for. My situation brought on a pretty heavy depression and a lot of hard feelings about myself. So where is the love that the symphony stands for?

"without bitterness or defeat we may encounter misfourtune and with humility meet success."

This is the hardest part for me personally because it makes me realize that anything I do while I'm with Alpha Xi is not because I did anything right but because there are thousands of women who did something right. Also I know that any successes that I encounter with Zeta Xi are because of the efforts of almost 200 women who want to succeed and any failing we may have are because of all of us and not just one of us. Does that make sense?

But the part I love the most is that the Symphony says we and not I. This reminds me that Alpha Xi Delta is not just about what she can do for us but what we can do together as Alpha Xi's.

FuzzieAlum, thank you for this post! I'm going through a really hard time right now with sorority stuff and I think I needed to be reminded of the Without Bitterness or Defeat portion of the symphony. It makes me realize that it's time for me to start living up to the symphony, Thank You.

I think for me it is simply remembering that the Symphony is not just a bunch of words that we rattle off during CM, but something that I should be living for daily. It needs to be applied for Alpha Xi's to truly represent the beauty of our sorority. I need to work on that.