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Pref Night Continued
The parties are over and we walk silently back to the activity center. We are required to remain silent from the time we leave the last party until we fill out our bid cards and leave the activity center. I see Lisa and Tina on opposite ends of the room. Neither of them looks particularly happy and they both complete their cards quickly and leave. I really want to talk to them! Most of all I really want to talk to my mom and dad. But tonight the decision is all mine, and I feel like I am making the first adult decision of my life.
My parents had been very surprised when I called them and asked them if I could rush. Like many who were familiar with Greek life only from the things others said to them about it while they were in college, they thought sororities were elitist organizations. Many years later, my mother said she had worried a lot about my decision to rush, because I had always been a girl who was friendly with many people and traveled fluidly amongst cliques as opposed to being in one particular group. She and my father were concerned that being with one particular group would change the way I viewed the world and turn me into a much more socially cautious person.
But who am I really? Do I belong in the sorority with so many people I know who are from similar backgrounds? Everything would be much easier that way? Do I want the sorority where I know no one yet everyone is so impressed I am still in the running? Or do I pick the sorority where I know quite a few people but there are plenty of others I don’t know? What about GPAs? What about the physical houses? What about their social life and what the fraternities think of them? (Yeah, I know, I’m eighteen. So shoot me!)
I’m really agonizing here. I’m certain I could be happy in any of my choices. My RC is no help at all. She just tells me to pick whatever feels right. But what if they all feel right? I seriously consider doing eenie meenie minee moe. And then, like a lightening bolt it hits me. I know who my number one choice should be. I should go to the place that feels like home. Where they already know me and appreciate me for who I am and not who I possibly could be. Where I won’t feel like I am always trying to impress people or live up to some sort of ideal about what a member of that chapter is like. There was only one place where I truly felt this. I click my ruby red platform shoes and fill out my card...........
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