|
OK, so I have no patience, and I see this has had 50 views, so I'm going to move forward. Here's the next piece!
The structure of rush was 2 days of Welcome (15 houses), 2 days Welcome Back (10), Panorama (skit day)(7), RSVP (5), and Preference (3). Bid day was also the first day of classes, and we would learn our outcome late on that Monday afternoon.
Welcome Days. My campus was large and the houses were in clusters but still spread over a wide area. On this round (and sadly ONLY this round) we visited the houses in geographical order. My first set was Harry, Belatrix, Luna and Snape. I don’t remember Harry or Snape at all. One of Molly’s best friends was a Luna. They had the best location on campus, were probably known for being the prettiest girls, the cheerleaders, etc. I remember being bumped like crazy. I think I met 6 girls at this party. They can’t possibly have remembered one thing about me! But it was fast-moving, and by the way, I didn’t have one thought about being memorable or learning anything about them. At the Belatrix house, the conversation was definitely the most awkward of these original 4. These were the 4 in-houses (the houses ON campus).
The other 11 houses were called out-houses and were off campus. Not THAT far, but still, not right there. Then over the rest of the next day and a half, I made my way through the rest. I remembered at He Who Must Not Be Named that one of Molly’s friends (Molly has A LOT of friends!) had been a He Who Must Not Be Named, and I mentioned it. Not especially cool since she (along with a lot of sisters) had deactivated that prior spring. But I didn’t know that at the time. Besides, I didn’t get a good vibe, and their house was a Spanish style, which I didn’t like. Yes, this is what occurred to me at the time. Like I’m shopping for real estate!
The Rons seemed very, uh, well, bitchy. They were perfectly nice to me, but I could tell these were THOSE kind of girls, and that was the kind of girls I had no time for in high school. In talking about rush later with my new pledge sisters, one commented about them asking her what her Dad does. I remembered they’d asked me that as well, but it didn’t stand out that much. My Dad was a photographer, had met lots of famous people over the years, and people generally thought we must live a very exotic life because of his sexy job. (slight swerve here: Utter Nonsense, but I won’t get into that here) So I could easily talk about him, the family business, etc., without thinking about it too much, and I was too oblivious to put two and two together that they were finding out if I met the financial threshold. I didn’t.
I thought TRELAWNEY was nice, but they were so far away, and they had a 2-story house, which I thought was weird. Plus, it was really far away. And since I was on a real estate search, location, location, location!
Nevilles were really bubbly, and their song was SOOOO contagious. Plus, when they were finishing singing at the end of the party, they slowly backed up through the door, and we all wondered how they did that without killing each other.
The Dumbledores were loads of fun. That’s all I’ve got on them.
The Hermiones, Cho’s house felt comfortable to me since I’d been there before. While here I was totally focused on what the girls were doing who were NOT talking to me. What secret things were they doing?
Ginny was the old Victorian home, and their song was about their particular chapter – the house with the winding stair. (yes, anyone who can put two and two together has this one figured out!)
Mad Eye was the newest house on campus (Molly’s ex-house), and it was like a big regular house. Not cool. But it was interesting to find my sister’s name on the charter.
MALFOY was the Jewish house, so I pretty much wrote them off because it didn’t apply to me. Plus, they also had a regular house that had been converted to a sorority house. And no, it didn't occur to me to consider them. I think we've already figured out that I was clueless.
The others are just a blur. I wonder if they felt the same about me? My grades and application probably got me through round 1. We didn’t do resumes back then, but I’m sure I filled out my application thoroughly.
For Welcome Back, amazing this, I was cut from 3 of the 4 first houses I visited. I’m sure that if Belatrix had been more selective, I’d have been cut from them too. The other house I was cut from was Ron. I cut He Who Must Not Be Named to get me down to 10. Now, I’d like to clarify here that I use the word cut because that’s what it was. The houses did cuts and we got a list of who invited us back, then we cut houses to get us to 10. Of course, if you weren’t invited to 10 then you went to every one you got. I didn't know of anyone getting fewer than 10. I was clueless and assumed everyone was doing the exact same thing as me.
Welcome Back was house tours. Also, I lost the comfort of having my rush group with me for the day. We were suddenly on our own, and I felt lonely.
The House with the Winding Stair just brought one thing to my mind; I pictured coming home drunk and falling down those stairs. Funnily, but sadly, Molly said she thought the exact same thing when she went through. The drinking age was 19, so it's not quite as appalling as it now seems.
During the house tour at the Dumbledore house, I remember asking about the history of the pledge paddle. My level of stupid really cannot be fathomed at this point.
The TRELAWNEY house was just soooo far away. And the others, again, just a blur.
I was cut from Dumbledore, TRELAWNEY and MALFOY, so I had a full schedule but didn’t cut any houses myself for Panorama. I didn’t care. It didn’t occur to me to be disappointed, but then I didn’t realize that Dumbledore and TRELAWNEY were two of the strongest houses on campus and I should have been impressed that I'd even been invited back for Welcome Back. And MALFOY, again, nothing personal. It was a Jewish house and I’m not Jewish. Why would they keep me?
|