The next morning I woke up excited that I was (hopefully) one step closer to being a new member of one of the great chapters on campus. I got out of bed and started to walk down the hall to the bathroom, but stopped at Kristen’s room where she and her room mate (who was also rushing) were chatting worriedly with a few other PNMs from our floor. Naturally, I poked my head in to see what all the fuss was about. Apparently the weather had severely deteriorated overnight, and there was talk of postponing preference round! Rumors were flying, some girls said the RA’s had gotten word, other girls said their PX’s had called or e-mailed and that apparently there was a deathly “frost bite warning,” where, if you had any exposed skin for 5-10 minutes, there was a severe risk for getting frostbite!
Logically, 18-year-old girls who are stressed out of their minds+rumors+imaginations+awful weather news=PREF ROUND IS CANCELED!
We had no idea what was going to happen. I got in the shower, and when I came back apparently legitimate news from our PX’s was that pref round was postponed for a little while in hopes that it would warm up later in the day. Additionally, the semi-formal dress for the PNMs WAS indeed canceled: we were allowed to wear warm clothes, jeans, sweaters, jackets, they even said that sweatshirts and sweatpants were OK! Let me pause here to inform you of the legendary, near-record breaking conditions that January…
The last 16 days of the month were 14 degrees colder than normal.
This was the 4th coldest Jan. in 20 years.
There were 12 days where the temperature was below 0 (pre-wind chill!).
The coldest temperature was -22 degrees on the 22nd, the coldest since 1/27/1994! (The 22nd was either pref day or bid day, don’t remember the schedule. And that’s pre-wind chill, are you kidding me!?!?!?)
5th most precipitation for Jan. in the LAST 127 YEARS! And the most since 1979.
Jan. snowfall was 37.2in, 19.3in more than the average norm.
3rd snowiest Jan. since 1879!!
7.9 inches fell on the 23rd!
Max. depth of snow on the ground was 17 inches.
Ok, at this point I seriously wanted to transfer! What had I gotten myself into!? Is this a joke?!!? Keep in mind that this was my first taste of winter up North.
This was no joke. I hadn’t thought about actually having to go out in these conditions! And then smile and impress people I didn’t know!
So I slapped on some jeans, wore a cute sweater, grabbed a pashmina for extra warmth, and brought a change of heels in my tote. Now all I had to do was pick up my schedule from Katie and head off to my parties, trying to avoid getting frostbite on the way.
My schedule for the day:
Wish Bear
Funshine Bear
Laugh-a-Lot Bear
Man! I was so bummed Secret wasn’t on there.
I told Katie, and she told me that the houses I did have were really good and not to worry about it. At the time, I was thinking that I wanted all 3 of my options to be faves and wanted to have a really tough decision that night, because then I knew I was sure to end up somewhere I loved! Funshine was still my clear favorite at this point, but looking back, even though I went into the preferences with a semi-clear idea of how I’d rank them, I was still ready to be persuaded by the sisters/preference conversations.
So in frostbite warning weather, in negative degrees, I trudged across campus to my first preference party. Little did I know that there was an even greater challenge I would have to face later that day…