I was also a colonizing member of my chapter, Eta Eta at the University of Central Florida.
What PSPGirl says is great, but I wanted to add that you don't always have a Pref for recruitment for a colony. We didn't. It just depends on the national involved.
It's great because everyone makes a fuss over you. You get to meet girls from chapters at other schools, Fraternity officers, and tons of alumni. The existing chapters at your school will probably pay a lot of attention to you.
In fact, should you ever see Curlygirly posting, she's actully my key sister from UF. After I got my bid, I introduced myself on the Kappa forum and she PM'd me. The week before initiation, I got another PM asking for my real name, and when we met our key sisters that weekend, she walks up and says "Hi, I'm Curlygirly, from GreekChat."
It is definitely a lot of work, though. My colony was giant. We initiated 120 sisters that weekend and so sisterhood has taken a lot of work. We've improved in that respect a lot over our first semester as a chapter, but it just takes work and time. There are times when nobody seems to have any idea what they're doing. Our advisors say we've made incredible progress, but there are weeks where we all feel we make more mistakes than anything else.
It's defintely worth it, though. I have my weeks when I wonder why on earth I ever decided I wanted to do this, but then they're so quickly followed by moments where I realize I wouldn't trade it for the world. We're up in a hotel room at a sisterhood event at four in the morning laughing so hard we're sick. We have in jokes galore already. Doing Dance Marathon with them was amazing...my fellow dancers were wonderful, and when we told our first set of visitors from our chapter we were hungry, word got out and we had so many sisters showing up with food we literally couldn't eat it all. (One sister even bought all 16 of us Slurpees.)
Sometimes I really can't live without my Kappa gals.
The best thing, though, is that you have an opportunity so few women ever get. What my chapter does right now will affect how it does in the future greatly. I'd personally say go for it.