[LOVEinZTA]

Fall Semester

My school had deferred recruitment, but the initial "open houses" if you will take place in the fall. It's really cruel - girls go visit all 9 chapter in the middle of November and get excited about greek life - then they have to wait until JANUARY to go back again.

As I mentioned, there was a girl from Mocha from my high school that I ran into before open houses in the fall. She was very nice and we had exchanged phone numbers at the time. A few weeks later she had called to ask if I would have dinner with her and a few "friends" at one of the campus cafeterias (meal plans are apparently an effective recruitment tool). Of course I didn't get a chance to answer my phone because there was some roommate crisis going on at the time and by the time I got the voicemail it was too late. I decided that Mocha thought I was blowing them off and I had completely ruined any chances I had of joining they're chapter. What a great start.

Open houses were scheduled for a weekend in November and everyone started getting excited by Halloween. Lisa and I were talking about how we had absolutely no clue what recruitment was going to entail when Ashley walked up. She explained to us the structure of recruitment, cuts, and what legacies and recommendations were. Lisa frowned and said that she had heard about recs and had talked to a few people from her hometown but she didn't think it was a big deal. Ashley informed us that we clearly weren't Macchiato or French Press material because she was waiting for the last of her recs to be sent in as we were speaking. If we didn't have recs for those two chapters there was absolutely no way they would even invite us back for the first round in January. Ashley then looked at me and asked if I had any recommendations sent in. I told her that I'd had one for each chapter in by the end of the summer. She promptly shut up and walked back to her room.

With open houses being the next weekend I, being the smart girl that I am, went out to my school's football game of the season. This seemed fine at the time, but this wasn't November in New York, this was November in the south. Low and behold, I got horribly sunburned. Any normal human being would have been fine by a week later, but not me. To add to the drama, my entire body started peeling by Wednesday with the first party scheduled to start Friday around 5:00. I was absolutely positive this was going to ruin my entire recruitment, but there was really no time to worry about it all!

The First Rho Chi Meeting

Wednesday afternoon was the "recruitment orientation" meeting where I met my Rho Chi's and recruitment group. My two rho chi's were Amanda and Gina. It turned out Gina was from the same city as me and we had taken dance from the same place (though at different times). Amanda was very sweet and informative but I didn't get to talk to her too much. In my group was Lady, a girl that sat next to me in one of my classes with me at the time. It was nice to have a familiar face around! Amanda and Gina practiced lining us up (alphabetically of course) so we would know who to stand behind every time we lined up. In front of me was Mindy (I swear I could still identify her from the back of her head to this day) and behind me was Sally. We were told to wear the shirts we had received when we registered for recruitment, jeans, and comfortable shoes on Friday and meet behind the dorm I lived in at 4:30 on Friday.