First, before I eventually reveal the house I joined, here are the 10 houses at my school that I did NOT join, in alphabetical order :
Alpha Tau Omega
Beta Theta Pi
Delta Chi
Delta Tau Delta
Delta Upsilon
Phi Delta Theta
Phi Kappa Psi
Sigma Alpha Epsilon
Sigma Chi
Sigma Nu
3rd Round was an hour long and unlike the other rounds in that it finished relatively early, at around 9 pm so that all of the houses had time to decide who they wanted to cut or keep as well as take down the setup of 3rd round and prepare for bidnight parties.
The night started at Braves. 3rd Round was definitely more serious than 1st or 2nd round had been, as there wasn’t any joking when I entered the house, just a bunch of serious looks on people’s faces. We were led into the dining room where there were personalized place settings. Everything on the table was in the house’s colors, and draped over each chair was a shirt with the house’s letters on it in the house’s colors. Seating alternated brother/rushee/brother/rushee down long tables; each brother talked primarily to one rushee. As dinner was being served, the president with horrible public speaking skills gave a speech about how we had lots on our plate tonight 
. What he said next surprised me; he said that Braves had already made their cuts and that we should just relax and take it easy and get to know who we talk to. The dinner was one of the best I’ve ever had as it started out with salad and then led to very tender steak followed up with a dessert of grasshopper pie. The dinner conversation was for the most part small talk with the brothers asking rushees how they were doing and just general chit chat about this and that, nothing too serious. After the dinner was the conversations. Mine ended up being a 1 on 2, as it was one brother and another rushee aside from myself. I was paired with a brother I had never met before and another rushee who I knew was going to join Braves.
What followed was one of the worst and most awkward conversations I ever had.
The brother started asking questions non-stop, and not giving any feedback to my answers, just moving on to the next presumably pre-scripted question. The questions themselves had the tone of assuming that I was going to join Braves, there were questions such as “What leadership roles do you plan on taking in Braves?” and “What do you see as your biggest impact on this house being?” I only got ask one question – What is the strongest aspect of Braves.
I got the worst answer possible.
The brother told me that the strongest aspect of
Braves was its academics. I had done some research previously during the day and found out the
Braves had the worst greek gpa on campus, well below both the all mens and all greek averages. At this point I had decided that
Cardinals would really have to screw up for me to not join their house because there was no chance I was joining Braves. However, the conversation at
Braves wasn’t over yet. What made the whole conversation even worse was that the other rushee with me was never asked any questions at all – the only thing he ever said was “Robrun, I know that you would fit in here at
Braves and would be a big asset to the house” – the rushee was playing the part of rusher, which just made things worse than they already were.
Luckily, the round ended soon after that, with a short ending speech by the president about how Braves would be very happy to see us later in the evening.
On the way to
Cardinals during the 10 minute break inbetween houses, me and some other rushees talked to each other and realized that 7 different rushees were down to
Braves and
Cardinals. (5 of the 7 in thie group ended up joining the same house as me) Even while walking into
Cardinals, the rushee who I was with at
Braves who was just coming to
Cardinals “for the heck of it” told me that I should join
Braves with him and that I could do much better than
Cardinals.
The opening at
Cardinals was much like the opening at
Braves, with the president giving us a speech to try and help us relax and that he had been in our shoes before and knew what it was like and that we should just take it easy and enjoy ourselves in the meantime. The dining hall at
Cardinals was much like
Braves, with personalized place settings and a similar seating arrangement, this time at round tables instead of at long tables. As it just so happened,
Cardinals served a steak dinner too. I barely touched my food, as I had eaten way too much at
Braves. Even though the steak at
Cardinals wasn’t as good as the steak at Braves, it didn’t really matter. I was sold on this house and something very bad would have to happen for me not to join
Cardinals. After some alumni speaker who talked about how his experiences in
Cardinals helped him throughout his whole life, it was time for conversations.
This time, conversations were 2-on-2’s, with two brothers and two rushees in the same room. I was definitely more comfortable here was one of the brothers was the person who had introduced me to
Cardinals in the first place and I knew the other rushee and the other brother fairly well. The talk here was not tense at all, it was very laid back and like it was four old friends who had known each other forever were just hanging out, which made me feel really at ease.
There was then a final speaker, a former president of
Cardinals, who talked about how the ball was in our court now and that even though he would be happy to see us all back at
Cardinals in an hour or so, we should do what was best for us. The speaker said some other stuff too, but I wasn’t really paying attention because I was only thinking about coming back to
Cardinals later that night – I knew I had found my home for the rest of my college career.
Once I got back to my dorm, Greg was there even though he lived in a different dorm to peer pressure me and tell me I should join
Braves with him. Greg did not want to take no for an answer which was very frustrating – it took quite a while before I got him to lay off.
Mark, on the other hand, was in a completely different boat. He could not pick between
Braves and
Marlins. What ended up happening was that Greg and one guy from the dorm who had suicided
Marlins went back and forth trying to convince Mark to join them and not the other. It got bad enough that Mark eventually decided which house he was going to join by a coinflip…he joined
Braves.
For the first time since rush started, I knew exactly what I was doing. I had no trouble making my rankings – my rho gammas even asked me If I was okay since they remembered how much trouble I had deciding what to do after 2nd round.
At this point, it was about an hour until we found out which houses we got into. Being tired from rush week, I decided to take a short nap before I ran to my new house.
As it turns out, I overslept and the rho gammas came knocking to my door to tell me to go run to my new house...
...Cardinals!
Bidnight at Cardinals was one of the most fun nights I ever had and it will definitely stick out in my mind for a long time. It turned out that most of my friends had also joined Cardinals which made the experience that much more fun. From that night, I have definitely been
Proud to be a Fiji!