Remembering Spring '11 Recruitment

[beebee21]

I have known since elementary school that I wanted to be a sorority girl. Unlike many of my friends, this was never something I had to contemplate deeply, I just knew. My mom was a Theta, but unfortunately at my school there isn't a Theta chapter, so I had no legacy advantage. Just as well, I thought, I was ready to make my own legacy.

I'm a California girl but I decided to attend college on the east coast. While I knew I wanted to be in a sorority, I had only heard of a few of them, most of which did not have a chapter at my school. At my school, sorority recruitment takes place in the spring, allowing everyone to settle in for a semester before embarking on sisterhood and all of the time that goes in to it. I was extremely impatient all first semester and always kept my eyes out for girls with letters. When I would see one, I would immediately straighten up and smile in hopes they'd remember my face.

We returned early from Christmas break to begin recruitment. When I arrived, there was so much snow on the ground that I wanted to turn around and go back to California. I caught a cab back to the dorms with a girl from my high school who was also about to start recruitment. We gabbed about the different sororities we knew of, and while we wanted to keep an open mind, we found it hard not to let what we had heard last semester affect us.

As seems to be customary on this site, I will use code names for the 9 chapters. I originally had these as cars, but some cars were a little more luxurious than others and I didn't want that to mean anything. I have changed them to fruit!

Blueberry
Kiwi
Tangerine
Watermelon
Raspberry
Apple
Blackberry
Lime
Banana
There are no houses on the campus, so our recruitment was held at a hotel. We traveled up and down the escalators to get to the various ballrooms where each chapter was holding their parties. The first day was a rotation of going to all nine chapters for 15 minutes each. To say I was nervous would be an understatement. I had absolutely no idea what to expect, but all I could do was hope that when everyone said to trust the system, they would be right. I was ready to find my sisters.