Preference Round
Once again, we made the trek to our recruitment group meetings to get our schedules. I was happy to see that mine read:
Salsa
Merengue
I was thrilled to have my two favorite houses left for Preference Night! Though they seemed very different, I could see myself enjoying being a part of either one, so I didn’t come into the night with a favorite.
First up was
Salsa. The weather had cooled off further and snow was gently falling as we all stood outside the chapter houses. I walked into the house and was greeted by a sophomore who I didn’t know. We all gathered in the dining room for desserts and chatting, and then we broke off for one-on-one conversations. The girl who was preffing me had also attended two houses on Preference Night, one being a house that she really liked throughout the week and one being her legacy, Salsa. She talked about making the decision to join her legacy house over the house that all of her friends were joining and how she was glad to end up where she had ended up. Our conversation only lasted a few minutes and then we had a lot of dead air because the chapter gave a lot of time for one-on-ones, so we ended up going back to surface level conversation. To conclude Preference, the sisters put on a beautiful ceremony, and I left the house feeling like I would be happy to be back for Bid Day tomorrow.
My last event of the week was at
Merengue. The house was beautifully decorated and I was greeted by the girl that I had clicked with so strongly the previous day. This round was really, really wonderful. We shared dessert, listened to beautiful singing from the
Merengue sisters, and I felt an even stronger connection with the girl I was talking to. The mood of the round was well-set and I found myself looking around the room and thinking to myself that these girls could be the women that I spent the rest of college with. I walked out thinking about how lucky I was to have two options that I liked and wondered how I would make a decision.
I had to sit and think about what I wanted to do for a while. I honestly felt odd - even though I had great parties at both chapters for the whole week, I was having a little bit of trouble putting one above the other because I felt that in actuality, I didn’t really know much about them. With the help of my ever-prepared recruitment counselor, who asked me questions about what my priorities were coming into the week, what I valued in a sorority experience, and what I saw during the week that matched those qualities, I was able to think through it more clearly. Finally, she asked me which chapter I would be more excited to run home to the following day and which faces I wanted to see in a crowd. That was what made the choice easy for me.
I listed the chapters:
Merengue
Salsa
The next morning, most of the girls in my hallway went out to brunch together. My roommate had gone to
Salsa and
Cha Cha and was hoping for a bid to Salsa. The hall was split all over the place with where we had placed our hopes - I think that of the eight girls that were there at brunch, we ended up in six of the seven chapters.
We all went back to our recruitment groups to open our bids and were taken out into the hallway individually to open them with our recruitment counselors. I opened mine and saw that
“With love and careful thought, the ladies of
Merengue cordially invite…”
Hooray! I was thrilled to be running home to the fun, diverse, and savvy girls of
Merengue. Each woman had shown me a different background and a unique reason for joining a sorority but they all shared a really tangible love for their sisterhood. I got to run down Greek Row, which was now fully covered in a beautiful blanket of snow, to...
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Kappa Kappa Gamma!
I have been really lucky with my sorority experience. The girl who I talked to on Skit and Pref became my fabulous big, and I now have a wonderful little and beautiful grandlittle. I have served on our Chapter Council and I currently am on Panhellenic Exec and have a few other positions within Greek Life. Our campus has a wonderfully friendly environment and many of my closest friends are members of other chapters and I still feel incredibly thankful to have been able to go through recruitment right away and find a home to kick off my college experience for real
