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Thank you for sharing such a sweet story. I actually teared up. I know - I'm a dork.

Originally posted by BrownEyedGirl
I had the most amazing time as a Recruitment Counselor last fall! I started out with nineteen amazing freshman girls (three were in-house legacies, three more were legacies whose relatives had graduated from CU sororities), had seventeen PNM's go all the way through recruitment and fifteen matched with a sorority. I had so much fun with them - after the first two days of parties, I had a cookie cake made for them that read "One Round Down!". I hung out with them on their hall, watched movies, picked out clothes, looked at hometown boyfriend pictures, and chatted about what they looked for in a chapter. We called our group ("Group Twelve") a mini-sorority and got really close.

At the end of the ten days of recruitment, I had been living in a hotel away from my sisters and most friends for two weeks. They had been voting and visiting and stressing about where they would end up and were a group of teary, panicked, insecure young ladies. So the night before Pref round, as we passed my "candy bucket" around for the third time, I gave them one of many pep talks. I can hardly remember this but I know that I told them how wonderful they all were, how I had truly enjoyed getting to know them, and that in order for these chapters to see the amazing young women I'd gotten to experience, they had to believe in themselves and put out a confident, enthusiastic face to the world. I told them the truth, that I'd be proud to call any of them my sisters and wished I could bring all of them home with me or at least put them in a little Ziploc bag and carry them around in my pocket 24/7. Well the next night we went to a post-pref dinner out and, over pasta, one of the girls stood up and tapped her plastic glass with a spoon. She told me, while the other girls got all teary-eyed, that now I really *could* carry them around in a Ziploc bag - she handed me a bag filled with letters and pictures from each of them, telling me what a wonderful friend and role model I'd been and how much they'd loved having me as their Rho Chi. I came back to the hotel that night a teary mess and all the other recruitment counselors and I read and reread those letters to remind us that the sleep deprivation, sisterhood withdrawal, and total stress overload was all worth it.

On Bid Day, I handed each girl her bid in a sealed envelope and asked them to wait until each girl had hers to open theirs. After the jumping, squealing, and tears that followed the one-two-three-OPEN routine, they stopped and looked at me. I wondered what they were doing - out in the rain, sororities waiting for them on campus...wasn't this the moment I thought we'd all drop everything and run home to our chapters? They pulled out a Rho Chi t-shirt of mine (somehow stolen from my suitcase with the help of a Rho Chi roommate they suckered into their plot!) that they had all signed with sweet notes. That t-shirt stayed in a corner of my room displayed on the wall, and whenever I had a horrible day or felt tired or cranky or a little fed up, rereading what they wrote and remembering that moment - the thoughtfulness they showed getting these elaborate gifts ready for me - always makes my day. I love my Group Twelve girls and was so proud to bring three back to ZTA with me on Bid Day!! I experienced some tremendous highs and lows with those girls, and we really bonded - I love seeing them on campus or with their new sisters. They're such precious girls and although I never thought I could tear myself away from my chapter for all that time (no letters on my car or shirt or in my life at all for five months!) it was more than worth it - it was the best Panhellenic experience I could have asked for! (Sorry to rant, but I'm a proud former Rho Chi and a very emotional gal to boot!)