A Disney Princess Recruitment AND Rho Gamma Story!

[ariel52]

With it being my senior year as well as the year I’ve taken on the role of Recruitment Counselor, I’ve been thinking back on my sorority experience and how I fell in love with not only my sorority but all the sororities on campus. But who am I kidding, I actually think about my recruitment experience all the time! I just thought I’d share it with all of you lovely Greeks since I go to a school with a fairly small Greek Life, I’m going to disguise the names of the sororities on campus with Disney Princess names! But I’ll list the sororities here:

Alpha Gamma Delta
Delta Phi Epsilon
Phi Mu
Phi Sigma Sigma

But for now I will call them (in no particular order):
Cinderella
Jasmine
Belle
Anna (if you haven’t seen Frozen, please do so immediately)

I was a transfer student to my college and already 19 years old. I knew that I wanted to get involved on campus in a way that my community college hadn’t allowed me, and sorority life felt like the perfect opportunity!. You know how we always hear the stories that go, “I never pictured myself as a sorority girl…”? Yeah, that wasn’t my story. I had been a dancer for longer than I could remember and I missed having that team, that sisterhood. So when I realized that my new university had Greek Life, I was intrigued and began looking at the sororities online. From looking at their websites, I immediately assumed that Cinderella was the classy, respected sorority; that Anna was the fluffy, girly sorority; that Jasmine was the sorority who seemed to be very social and that Belle was the academic sorority.

It was the first week of school when I was put in a group discussion along with two other girls: a girl in Cinderella letters who was super friendly and cute, and another girl named Aimee in a t-shirt which I would soon learn was a Rho Gamma t-shirt. She was very quiet with a sweet voice and I immediately liked them both. After class, Ashley ran after me and handed me a recruitment flier, saying that she thought I would really enjoy sorority life. I was so excited and asked her which one she belonged in--I liked her and wanted to be a part of her sisterhood already! She told me her sorority but I couldn’t remember the name. But I certainly remembered her beautiful stitched letters and desperately wanted some of my own.

When my boyfriend (now ex-boyfriend)’s older sister scoffed at the idea and said she never had “time” and was far “too busy with academics” to be in a sorority, I was a little put off and for a moment considered not going through recruitment. But then, my aggravation at her comments only pushed me to go through recruitment more! I decided that I wasn’t going to let a girl who didn’t know anything about Greek Life impact my decision!

I went home to go to work, quickly changed (as the first night of recruitment was that night!) and went back to school where I met my own Rho Gamma, who I was sad wasn’t Aimee but instead a super fun, cute, bubbly girl named Sophie. The PNMs were gathered together in a small room--there were only about 50 of us (I go to a largely commuter school)--and I sat down next to a confident and pretty preppy girl with a linen button down, riding boots, and a Michael Kors watch named Alexandra. We had both missed the first day of recruitment and she was more excited than anything to be joining a sorority. She had done tons of research and definitely knew which she wanted to go to--Anna. Two other girls were sitting with us who knew each other from their classes--Kristi, who after the first day wanted Cinderella, and Sydney who, like Alexandra, really wanted Anna. There was also a girl from my Art History class who was there, Sammy, who always seemed negative about everything. I secretly hoped we wouldn’t be in the same sorority.

The Rho Gammas took us to our first recruitment room (since there are no houses on campus) which happened to be the Cinderella room! I was so excited to see Ashley as soon as I entered the room with Alexandra, but we were a little thrown off when the sisters just kind of looked at us for a second before we awkwardly approached each other. We ended up sitting down at a table with Ashley who explained Cinderella’s philanthropy to us and helped us make some little baggies for a children’s hospital. Then Ashley pulled me to go talk to her other sisters, saying she wanted to introduce me. Unfortunately, the next girl I talked to was really stiff and rehearsed and seemed sickly (and fakely) sweet. As the next girl bumped her, it was just more of the same and I couldn’t help but feel a little uncomfortable. But the conversation was steady,, the girls were nice and pretty, and they really were interested in my dance background since they had won the school dance competition the previous year! I left the room excited for more and to meet the other sororities!