[jenidallas]

I was very nervous the morning of preference and went for a walk to clear my head. When I came back to get ready our schedules were in our boxes.

There was wailing and sobbing coming from my floor when I walked back up the stairs. The girl at the end of the hall (the one who was set on Tigers and who was spoken to rudely the night before at the secret party) had only been invited back to Lions. My roommate and I both still had full schedules. The cheerleader who had been cut by Lions the day before was going back to Bears and Tigers. The other cheerleader had a full schedule but had decided she did not want to revisit Bears. Our pageant queen friend was only invited back to Tigers and Bears as well. So it looked like unless we all went Tigers we would not be in the same chapter.

I was starting to get irritated by this day especially by all the talk back and forth and decided to only talk to my roommate and pageant queen as we got ready. This apparently upset one of the cheerleaders (the one who was not invited to the secret party but got the full schedule) and she said something nasty to me as we were leaving to go to pref parties. For preference, we all met in a central location on campus. Women who were not going to parties for a particular block had to sit in silence there. Each chapter held two parties so the PNMs were split in groups – there were on average 6-11 women per party. We were told there were 31 women remaining in recruitment all together. I remember seeing the rude rushee there and she told us that she was ONLY going to Tigers as her boyfriend was vice president of one of the fraternities so she knew that was the only “socially acceptable” choice and therefore she was not going to waste her time elsewhere so had turned down invitations to the others. A lot of women had decided not to go to Bears.

My first party was Lions. It was a lovely party in an old house on the campus. It felt very southern-feeling and old-fashioned. I remember all the girls were wearing matching pastel dresses and they reminded me of a show choir in all that taffeta. They all kept talking about finding their fiancés and I remember in my head thinking they were the MRS degree chapter. This seemed like the kind of chapter I’d go into if I were ready to settle down after college and something about the chapter to me seemed like they were very set on their campus identity. Their ceremony was moving but I looked around and had trouble imagining myself spending four years there. Lots of girls cried but I didn’t quite understand what there was to cry about.

My second party was Tigers. I was picked up by the president of Panhellenic who I’d met earlier in the week. She made me so comfortable and asked me if the party the night before had thrown me off as she thought we seemed a bit bewildered and that perhaps no one had told me that might happen. She said they wanted so badly for the group of us to know we were wanted since other chapters had done those parties in the past which I thought was a plausible explanation. During the party several officers stopped by to talk to me and I felt very special. Their ceremony was beautiful and two of their songs were to tunes I knew from camp so it made me feel warm and fuzzy. I felt like I wanted this chapter because of who I envisioned myself becoming but was not sure if it fit me today – they were all so much more polished and popular than I was in high school but that was who I wanted to be in college and I felt special that they liked me.

My last party was Bears. I looked around and immediately knew there was something wrong… all the girls I had met were gone. I didn’t see a single one when the door opened. I saw the owl-eyed president and the awkward girl from my hall and a couple others and that was it. Period. I was double-preffed (me plus another rushee) and the awkward girl picked us up. She started by telling us we could be on exec as soon as we were initiated if we pledged them and then recited a list of reasons why we should give them a chance. Then she turned to me and told me that I was a legacy so they were counting on me to be loyal to that. “Your relationship with your mother will never quite be the same if you don’t pledge Bears – you can’t do that to your mother or she will never feel the same about you” she told me. This smacked me in the face because I hadn't really thought about my mother in all this and she had told me to keep an open mind... but to hear all this made me question whether she really meant it! And at this point all my confusion and lack of sleep caught up to me and I started sobbing. My mom saw this from across the room and came rushing over and asked if I wanted to sit in the corner and talk. And boy, did I ever. I told her want the girl had said and how my week had been going and she said “jenidallas, I love you no matter what… and while I’d be honored to have you as my sister, I want YOU to be happy… and I think you’d make a great member, wherever you are - if you want to be a Tiger, you'd fit in fine. But if you want to come here, you'll have a home too... but you have to follow your heart and make the decision that is going to help YOU become the better woman. This is your campus, not mine. And whatever you do, you need to be ready to do it for life.”. Hearing her say that and thinking of what she taught me, I suddenly knew exactly what I needed to do. The preference ceremony was starting so she grabbed my hand and let me over. And I smiled because suddenly my path was clear and I knew what I actually wanted to do.

After the last party, we went one by one into the Student Life Office. There were two doors – you walked in one and closed the door, signed your card, and the walked out the other. My friends agreed to wait on the other side so we could all walk back to the dorm together. Pageant queen walked out and we all started discussing what we had done. Rude rushee walked out behind her and overheard me telling them what I had done and looked at me like I was an idiot and said “well, I hope that wasn’t a stupid choice on your part” and then walked off. We all actually were very happy with what we had done and decided to go have dinner off campus to celebrate rush being almost over!