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Round 3: (Preference round!)
Pref was the round to go all out. Full makeup, my nicest short dress, earrings, heels, everything. This would be the day I learned who would be my sisters. I didn’t have any sisters and was mostly surrounded by male relatives growing up, and while it hadn’t been among my thoughts when I initially decided to go through recruitment, I can say along the way, I realized just how badly I wanted to have sisters. It was funny because if you had asked me at the start of recruitment, I would have rolled my eyes at the thought of getting emotional about it. But there I stood, nearly at the end of the process, feeling emotional. Weird.
I felt more prepared for my list this time around. I knew there was still the possibility of getting hurt, but I felt like I’d gotten over the worst of it last time.
Here was my list:
Milo
Sweet
As soon as I saw Milo, I knew something was wrong, but it wasn’t until I’d looked it over several times that I realized what was wrong: Rourke was missing. That wonderful active I’d met on day one, who had changed me from suspicious PNM to sorority-wannabe, was never going to be my big, because Rourke had cut me. Dang. I knew the conversation hadn’t gone well during round 2, but I still had hope.
“Are you feeling alright?” my recruitment counselor asked me. She knew how strongly I had felt about Rourke. “Yeah,” I said, and forced a smile. What was done was done: I still had Milo and Sweet. In other words, two sororities still wanted to call me one of their sisters, possibly. It was time to see what the big deal was about this whole preference business.
I stepped into Milo and was blown away. Wow. I hadn’t expected this at all. The actives were a vision, the decorations transformed the whole room, and they were singing in a way that was completely different from the more energetic chants that I had gotten used to. An active I hadn’t spoken with previously stepped up to take me to our own private corner in the room. As a PNM, I didn’t realize that, most of the time, for Pref you speak with someone you’ve spoken with before, so no alarm bells rang in my head. I was still ooing and aahing over the completely different atmosphere I’d stepped into; pref was serious business. We started with introductions, of course, but quickly moved on to a more serious topic: what Milo meant to the active. I remember very clearly how she talked about Milo as her home away from home and how when you were a Milo, you had a community that stretched beyond Atlantis’s walls. Milos lived all across America, and they were happy to welcome you as...well, as a sister. The last part of the pref ceremony involved the seniors who were due to graduate speaking about what the chapter and sisterhood meant to them. I cried; I could feel how genuine they were, and I wanted that. It was hard to say goodbye after that.
At that point, I was certain I’d be a Milo, despite the fact that they'd been at the bottom of my rankings previously, and there was nothing Sweet could do to convince me otherwise. Again, the actives were a vision, again, the decorations transformed the whole room, and again, the song they sung sunk into my bones and gave me chills. The actives walked down in a line that mirrored ours, and I saw one of the actives I’d spoken with previously, but she whisked away the PNM in front of me. Again, I was paired with an active I’d never met before, but she smiled at me sweetly (much like the name), and guided me to our spot. We breezed through our introductions, and to our mutual surprise, found out we had a lot in common. So much in common, in fact, it was kind of crazy. I felt this deep attachment forming to this person I’ve never met before, and again, I broke into tears when the speeches began. “Aw, don’t cry,” she told me and offered me tissues. “You’re so sweet.” You know all those feelings I had for Rourke #1? They felt like a bucketful of water in comparison to the great lake that had opened up in my heart for my Sweet pref mom.
On the way to fill out our MRABA cards, one of the PNMs that had attended Pref with me at Sweet asked me if I knew who I wanted to put down as my number 1. "Sweet," I said, no hesitation (we probably weren’t supposed to talk about it, oops). "Oh, me too!" she said, smiling. I had that giddy feeling, like a sugar high. Maybe it was too soon to be happy, until I had that bid card in my hand with Sweet clear as day on it, but it wasn’t like I thought Milo would be a bad option either.
My final ranking:
1. Sweet
2. Milo
Since Bid Day was really the same day as Pref, it was time to kick back and relax, or well...as best as a nervous PNM can. Our new chapter would give us our bid day shirts to wear, so shorts and a tank top it was.
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