OK, so this story has been loooooong in coming. It is a little rocky and there are a few unexpected twists along the way, but bear with me. It has a happy ending
I'm going for mostly honest, if not brutally honest... so please be gentle with me until you see the ending, I know I made a lot of bad choices along the way.
One more thing, I've decided to go with a 'gemstones' theme because I wanted to keep to a classic theme, and something that mostly everybody could follow easily.
My school has a total of 11 NPC sororities, so this shouldn't be too hard-- but feel free to ask if you get too confused
I'm just going to be straight with this since it happened so long ago and let everybody know that when I created an account here and posted, (as in this account, CherrySonata), it was my
second time going through recruitment. So, I am going to tell you about the first time before I tell you about the second time.
Southwesternern State School had 11 sororities, and they are as follows:
Topaz
Peridot
Tanzanite
Ruby
Sapphire
Tourmaline
Obsidian
Amethyst
Emerald
Lapis Lazuli
Garnet
Tanzanite was originally Diamond, but it was way too hard to read without highlighting. If I slip up I apologize but I think that I caught all my errors (and hopefully the colors are legible, too).
A brief history that is a little important, in high school I struggled with depression a fair bit but by the time I got to college I was doing pretty well. Although I was a very Hermione-ish type of girl, with my nose constantly in a book, almost never wearing makeup or doing my hair... maybe not the ideal candidate for a sorority. But my Freshman year, I did not know what a sorority was. I went to college without any knowledge of it. I did not have older friends or family who told me about them. I did not even know they existed. Over the course of the year, I would see the letters around campus and become curious. I finally asked my older sister about them, and she explained a little bit.
She is 2 years older than me, and had been going to my school for 2 years by the time I got there. You'd think she could have told me as an incoming freshman that I should Rush, but she didn't mention it. Ah well, it is probably for the best. I had a tough freshman year but by the time summer came I knew I wanted to go through recruitment in a few months, so I signed up. Now I should mention, at the end of Freshman year I got mono and tonsillitis, and so my grades had slipped a bit spring semester because I missed so much class. It wasn't like I had BAD grades, but they definitely weren't up to my usual standard.
My main motivation in going through despite my sophomore status was because I was very shy and introverted, and had not made many friends. I thought that joining a sorority would at least help me meet a lot more people, and that I would be able to possibly join a group and make friends. I was not set on joining a sorority, and from what I understood, I did not want to join one I was not in love with, so I wasn't obsessed with the idea of Greek Life. I still wasn't sure if it even was for me, because I thought that there would be a lot of partying, and since I didn't drink I would have to find a way to deal with that. But I lived in the dorms, so I knew I would be dealing with that anyway. At this point the only thing I knew about sororities was what my sister and the Panhellenic website said.
I didn't know anything about recommendations or dress codes or anything. I did what Panhellenic told me to, and didn't do any research on my own. I did not know that the first day I should dress slightly fancier than what they told me; I wasn't really prepared. I was the first in my family to go Greek, so I didn't really know anybody who could help me.
The first day was overwhelming, and it was just check-in and orientation. I went to bed really excited for the house visits to start the next day.