[GymnastA]

Wow! The first day of recruitment was so exciting and so much fun, but long and tiring! We went to 8 parties and learned a little bit about each chapter and met a few sisters. When I got my party schedule, it went like this: Sydney, London, Atlanta, Athens, Barcelona, a break for lunch, Beijing, LA, and Seoul. I was going to be busy!

The first house I went to was Sydney, and I was very glad that it wasn’t my favorite house going into the process. (Yeah, I definitely went into Recruitment with an open mind, but a girl always knows at the back of her head what she likes and dislikes. But I really wanted to give every chapter a fair shake!) We lined up and walked into the house, and I was surprised that the girl actually touched me going into the Great Room. I have no idea what I thought she was going to do, but I was not expecting that! I remember looking up at the room full of girls singing, clapping their hands, and moving to their opening song and being like “What the hell did I get myself into?” Conversation was awkward here, and the girl “rushing” me (Can I say rushing? It’s my story, I’m going to say rushing, damnit!) was nervous too. She was a first-time rusher, and she was just as nervous as I was! She kept telling me that it was okay to be nervous, because she was, and in other setting, I would find that endearing. However, I stood there thinking, “Listen, girlfriend. You have to impress me and sell me on the merits of Sydney, not have me reassure you about rushing me!” I left the house happy to have started Recruitment, but not absolutely loving Sydney,

Next was London. The girls here were all dressed in a variety of color letter shirts, and I loved looking at all of the different patterns and colors that these girls had! The girl that picked me up was awesome. She was animated and talked with her hands, which made me laugh, because that’s so me! She was from NJ, and all of the people that came to talk to me were funny and into the same stuff I was. What a coincidence! I left this house with a really, REALLY good feeling because I didn’t expect to like it all that much, and I did, so I was pleased.

Atlanta was next on my list, so I headed over there and waited in line. While waiting in line, I heard so much negativity about the house, and tried to shut up the catty girls in my head by just focusing on putting on more lip gloss and getting mentally ready to go to another party and answer the same questions about myself. The girls of Atlanta really put on a nice party. They had a few people speak, and then we broke off with sisters to talk. It was SO loud in there, and I have no idea why. I had a splitting headache when I walked out of there. I didn’t have a great time here. The girl I was talking to kept asking me about finances, such as “It costs X to be an Atlanta. Can you afford that?” Um, if I’m going through, I’ve looked into the cost and wouldn’t be going through if I wasn’t prepared to pay. Duh. I didn’t want to come back and was pretty sure the girl hated me, so I was excited to cross them off the list in my head.

I headed over to Athens, and was startled to hear the girls before I saw anything. Apparently, these girls bang on the door for a good 5 minutes while you’re standing there! I had a pretty good feeling about these girls. While meeting the girl that was going to rush me, she made an offhand comment to me, and I just didn’t like it. All of the girls here that I spoke to were very nice, but they were so loud that I wasn’t that comfortable here.

Finally! Barcelona! I was so excited, I was SKIPPING to the Barcelona house. I was so ready for this. I couldn’t wait to see my friends! I went in and they did their song, and a girl I had met in passing picked me up. We probably had the best connection out of anyone that I spoke to all week. We talked about everything under the sun, and I left there with just a great feeling and a smile on my face. All of my good friends had left their girls to come say hi to me, and there were a LOT of girls, so I was psyched! The girl rushing me asked me my name and how to spell it again at the end, and from reading GC, I was excited because I just knew that they basically had put me on their short list for bids and I was like, the happiest little PNM ever.

We had lunch next. I had a weight watchers ravioli dinner, because there were like 600 girls at Harden, and nothing else was open.

Getting back into the swing of things, I headed to Beijing. I expected to absolutely love this house, but I didn’t. They rarely take sophomores, and I didn’t want to get my hopes up at all. The girl rushing me seemed bored, like she didn’t want to be there. I was kind of surprised to see that these girls were super nice in class when it didn’t matter, but during Recruitment, she would have preferred to take a nap than talk to PNMs. I left this house feeling very under whelmed, but unable to rank them all in my head just yet.

LA was second to last, and I had heard that you walk in, 5 at a time, into a pitch black room. They chant their sorority’s name and all of a sudden, scream at you. I was ready for it, and still got spooked out! The girl I met was really nice. She was a sophomore too, and we had a really animated conversation. She asked me like 8 times how to pronounce and spell my name and I was pleased with that, like she wanted to make sure that I came back. I was pretty indifferent about LA going in, but I liked who I had talked to!

Finally, I went to Seoul, and an acquaintance picked me up. Before I could even be like “Hey, are you…” she spouted off my name, hometown, major, who she knew from my high school, and asked about my boyfriend. This girl meant business! She was very nice though, and was a COB in the fall, so she was new to all of this, too. She introduced me to a lot of her sisters, and seemed bored with the whole process, but had me meet a lot of different girls. I left here thinking that I wasn’t crazy about the house, but I knew it was a top house, so I’d try to keep them around.

Elon has you rank your top 5 in any order, and then your bottom three in order, so if you don’t go back to your top 5, they know what you like and don’t like. I ranked my sororities like this (I put my top 5 rankings that I had in my head in parenthesis):

Top 5:
(1) Barcelona
(2) LA
(3) London
(4) Seoul
(5) Beijing

Then my Bottom 3:

1. Athens
2. Sydney
3. Atlanta