Ah, Memories... A Retro Recruitment Thread

[Althea]

Hello, everyone! Seeing people getting ready for this fall's recruitment brought back a lot of memories from when I went through. Looking back on it, things definitely didn't turn out how I'd expected, but really - since when do things turn out the way one expects them to? Since I had it on my mind, I figured I might as well share my story with you. I hope you enjoy it!

My university - a relatively small one - had six chapters. I don't really feel comfortable naming them all right off the bat, so since I'm taking a trip down memory lane anyway, I'll name them after something right out of my childhood: Pokémon. (Yes, I am a huge nerd. :3)

Bulbasaur
Charmander
Eevee
Meowth
Pikachu
Squirtle

I'm going to give a bit of background information in the next post, and then I'll move right on in to the good stuff. I guess it's kind of story-style and I do tend to get a little wordy, so please bear with me. Well... let's get started!

[Althea]

I grew up in Southern California, just about an hour or so north of Los Angeles in what is, in my opinion, one of the nicest cities in the world (though I'm sure everyone will say that about where they feel most at home). My mom was a teacher at two private religious schools - I attended each of them while she was working at them, until about halfway through eighth grade when I transferred into the public school system for certain reasons.

When I started high school, my friends and I were convinced that we had everything all planned out. Forget what people said about it being difficult to stay friends with people all through high school, we were the best friends ever and we were all going to graduate together and then go to the same college and maybe even move in together after we finished school. We definitely had a very "Well, maybe it doesn't work for other people but it'll work for us" mindset at the time.

And for awhile, it actually looked like things were going according to plan. We were friends all through freshman year and sophomore year. Junior year, however, brought some changes: My mother, who had stopped teaching the summer after I switched schools, was quitting the job she'd gotten at a pharmaceutical company and was taking another job, in an entirely different state. What's more, she wanted my brother and I to come with her. She was in the middle of a feud with my grandfather and disagreed with the way my aunt and uncle were raising my cousins, so staying with them was definitely out. My best friend in the entire world - we're still friends to this day, actually - told her parents that I would be moving and they actually approached my mom and told her that they thought of me as their second daughter and that they would be more than glad to have me live with them so I didn't have to get used to a new high school midway through my junior year and so I could graduate with my friends.

However, my mom wanted to keep my brother and I with her, so a month before my seventeenth birthday we packed up our things and left sunny California behind to move to what can essentially be described as a college town, as the university (along with one or two other nearby things) was really what kept the city going. (I'm not going to get in to exactly how disappointed I was to be leaving - looking back on it now, I know it ended up being a good thing, but I was really rather bitter about it then.)

My intention was to graduate as soon as I could and move back to California to go to college with my friends. The college we would have attended together - CSUCI - doesn't actually have a Greek Life program, though according to their website they're now in the process of establishing the foundations for it. Back then, I was completely to oblivious to Greek Life except for the little I'd seen in movies, so I didn't actually know or care that they didn't have sororities or fraternities at CSUCI. I just wanted to be with my friends. I was terrified that if I was gone for too long, we'd lose touch and they'd forget about me - which hasn't happened, but such are the insecurities of a sixteen-year-old girl.

That plan didn't actually work out, though. The half of junior year and the senior year I spent at my new high school opened me up to so many different opportunities - one of them being a scholarship that I would have had much more competition for if I'd gone for an equivalent scholarship in California. The catch was that it was only applicable to either the university that was located in the city I'd moved to, or another state school a few hours up north. I agonized for weeks over what to do, but in the end I decided to stay where I was. It was much more cost-effective, and it would have been a lie to say that the programs offered at the university weren't more interesting to me than what I had been planning to study at CSUCI.

My family lived about thirty minutes out of town, as my mom had gotten remarried and we'd moved into my stepfather's house, so I decided to live on campus in the dorms. I'm not going to lie - I was excited about the dorm experience, which probably wasn't something I would have done in California as my friends and I had planned to pool our money and get an apartment together after graduation. To my surprise, my roommate turned out to be a girl who I'd had a few classes with in our senior year. I didn't know her well, but the few times I'd spoken with her in class she seemed okay. Very quiet and a little standoffish towards the more rambunctious members of our class, but not a horrible person.

Our move-in day was about a week before classes started, to give everyone a chance to adjust. My roommate - let's call her Milan (not her real name, but it's what she always called her character in video games) - and I moved in, organized our room, and got settled down as we waited for classes to start. Most of the friends I'd made in high school had either gone out of state for college or hadn't graduated yet, so I didn't have many people over, but Milan was a different story. She'd lived in the city her whole life, so she knew a lot of people who were always coming over to hang out. Two of them came over regularly even after classes started: Tessa, who lived in one of the other dorms on campus, and Amanda, who was going to the community college for her first couple of years.

Anyway, back to the week before classes started. Tessa's roommate was... how can I put this diplomatically?... a bad influence, to say the least. She was still seventeen - her eighteenth birthday was a few weeks after classes began - but she had a fake ID and a lot of older friends who kept coming over to her room with alcohol. Three days in, they spiked Tessa's orange juice with something - to this day we're still not sure what. Now let me make this clear: Tessa is tiny, and she'd never had alcohol before in her life. Whatever they'd put in her drink was so strong that it made her really sick. She ended up going to the hospital with alcohol poisoning and we didn't see her until a few days after classes had started, when she asked us if she could stay with us until she and her parents worked out what to do about her roommate situation, because she sure as heck wasn't going back there. Of course, we agreed.

While Tessa was with us, a mutual friend of hers and Milan's - who, as it turned out, was dating one of the friends I'd made in high school (big coincidence!) - came over to see how she was holding up. While she was there, she let it slip that she was an Eevee, and asked all three of us if we were planning on going through recruitment in a few weeks. Milan said no pretty much right away and proceeded to tune the rest of us out while reading a book, but Tessa and I admitted that we hadn't really thought about it and the Eevee encouraged us to give it a try.

She came back a few times in the weeks leading up to the beginning of recruitment to see if we'd registered yet. Tessa registered after her third visit, but I just wasn't sure if I should do it or not. Like I said earlier, I'd never exactly thought about Greek Life at all until then - but after passing a few of the recruitment tables around campus, I figured it couldn't hurt. I registered with a 3.8 high school GPA and no recs (yes, I know, for shame, for shame - but the Eevee and the Greek Life Office had assured both Tessa and I that we didn't need them, since we're a very noncompetitive school). When I look back on it now, I really wonder how different things would have been if I'd thought to get them, and I sort of wish I had.

The Eevee friend, Tessa, and I all tried to get Milan to at least give recruitment a chance, but she was adamant that she didn't want to do it, so we eventually dropped it. A few days before the informational session when we'd be meeting our Rho Chi groups, Tessa moved out of our room, and the night before the session she and I met up to talk about how nervous and excited we were for this.

Whether we were ready or not, recruitment was about to begin.

[Althea]

Our orientation was on a Thursday at 6:00, which gave most PNMs the chance to return from classes, grab a bite to eat, and get changed if they wanted to; since my last class that day had ended at 4:00, I ended up with a few hours on my hands. Tessa's last class ran until 5:30, so she'd made plans with me to grab some food after the orientation.

I remember being really nervous, even though it was just the orientation. Milan swears up and down that I kept fiddling with anything I could get my hands on... headphones, books, folders, pencils. I don't really remember it, but I do know I like to keep my hands busy when I'm nervous, so I guess I was doing it. Tessa showed up at about 5:45 and we walked to the auditorium together. On the advice of our Eevee friend, we'd both brought notepads and pencils in case we wanted to jot down anything while we were listening.

I'd done some research about Greek Life and the sororities on campus, but a lot of what I found seemed to be really basic and I was sort of hoping that the orientation would explain more. Tessa and I took a pair of open seats near three other girls, and we ended up chatting for a few minutes until the orientation started. I was starting to feel a little more relaxed - I can sometimes be pretty nervous around strangers, but the other girls seemed about as nervous as I was. I guess it's a little strange that seeing other people being nervous helped calm me down, but it was what made me realize that it was okay to be unsure about this, if that makes any sense. And since we were all in recruitment together, I figured it wouldn't really help to be afraid of the other girls. We all had similar goals, after all.

I don't remember the specifics of the presentation - a lot of it was pretty similar to what I'd already read about, but there were some other things that they went over that I wasn't too familiar with - but I remember being impressed with how smoothly it went and how completely at ease the speakers were. Then they introduced the Rho Chis.

The Rho Chis were so energetic! It was obvious that they were happy to be there and they seemed genuinely excited to get to know all of us. The groups were divided up by last name, so Tessa and I had to split up. There were seven other girls in my group. One of the girls was extremely outgoing and one of them was really, really quiet - quieter than I was. She didn't seem to want to meet anyone's eyes and I remember hearing one of the other girls whisper to her friend about how she wondered why the girl was even there, which struck me as kind of mean.

Our Rho Chi introduced herself as Amber and had us sit down in a circle. We played a pretty simple get-to-know-you game: The first girl would say her name and something she liked, and the girl next to her would repeat it before saying her name and something she liked. The girl next to that girl would repeat both of theirs, and so on, until we'd gone all the way around the circle. Amber was last, and she had an incredible memory - she got all of us right on her first try! One thing that did surprise me, though, was that the very quiet girl turned out to be Tessa's ex-roommate, Julie. She didn't fit my mental image of what I'd imagined her to look like at all - as I got to know her, though, I did find that she was a little difficult to get along with. For me, anyway. That may have been because I was friends with Tessa and I wasn't 100% willing to take everything Julie had to say at face value. I mean, I know I should have been more open-minded, but I just couldn't get over the fact that this was the girl who had allegedly put a friend of mine in the hospital.

After we finished learning each others' names, Amber talked a little bit about how we should all do our best to support each other. She did have good points - for all we knew, these were the girls who would become our sisters once Recruitment was over. And we wouldn't really gain anything by being nasty, either. I resolved to do my best to try to make nice with Julie if we ended up talking, but I wasn't going to actively seek her out, either. I know that was a really bad attitude to take, but... *shrugs*

We hung out for a little bit more, talking about classes and what we'd done the summer before. Amber suggested that we continue our talk over ice cream, at which point Julie and the outgoing girl - I don't remember her name now, but I guess they were friends - said they had to go. The rest of us ended up getting ice cream from one of the on-campus restaurants, and overall the orientation ended on a very pleasant note.

When Tessa and I met up after spending time with our Rho Chi groups, we were both excited for the next round. Open House was going to be Saturday morning, so we still had to get through an entire day of classes before we'd visit the each of the houses in our groups. For the two of us, Saturday just couldn't come quickly enough!

EDIT: Well, I'm about midway through my next post but I just got called in for an early shift at work tomorrow, so I need to get some sleep. I'll finish it up tomorrow, sorry everyone!

[victoriana]

I'm excited to read your story. I love the Pokemon code names! I am rooting for Eevee, because she's my favorite

[Althea]

Haha, thank you, Victoriana! C: Eevee is adorable, isn't she? When I was little, my brother and his friends would play the games with me, and they never wanted theirs - so I always caught dud Pokémon and traded for them. XD;

[Althea]

Sorry for the wait! The early shift turned into an all-day shift when one of my coworkers called in sick. I guess they couldn't handle the heatwave. OTL Anyway, moving on!

I woke up bright and early on Saturday morning, about an hour before I'd set my alarm to go off. Milan wasn't there - she had a Saturday morning PE class - so I figured I might as well use the time to get a head start on getting ready. Believe me when I say that getting ready is a chore for me. My hair is decidedly odd - when I just leave it alone, it dries straight in some places, wavy in others, and curly in others. It's a pain in the butt, but as long as I keep up with taking care of it, it's not too bad. At the time I was growing it out to donate it and it was about midway between my bust and my waist. Looking back on it - yikes! There were some long hairstyles that looked okay on me, but they were all ones that I didn't exactly have the know-how to do myself. It was long enough to donate by then, so I really should have gotten a haircut that suited me better. I know it sounds vain, but Recruitment is a lot like a job interview - you don't want to let looking sloppy keep you from any opportunities. I really wish I'd realized that a lot sooner than I did.

At any rate, I grabbed my stuff from a shelf in the closet Milan and I were sharing and headed in to use the shower. At my school, most of the dorms have a suite system - you share a bathroom with the room next door to you, and they're always really really careful that people of the same gender are matched up that way (though there was some drama about a boy with a unisex name that's more often used as a girl's name, who didn't have a roommate, being roomed next door to a pair of girls on move-in day - yiiiiikes!). I hadn't really gotten to know either of my suitemates yet, but as luck would have it, one of them was out for an early-morning workout and the other one, Amy, was just coming in to use the bathroom as I walked in from the other side. Awkward! But we both kind of tried to laugh it off and went about our business.

I finished showering and went back to wrestle with my hair. To my surprise, once Amy heard the water turn off, she followed me into my room! I was kind of like "Um...?" and she asked what I was up to that morning, since... well.. apparently I have this habit of rolling around in my sleep, and I usually keep hitting the wall - and it turns out her bed's right on the other side. So she wasn't used to the thumping stopping so early in the morning. I told her I was getting ready for sorority recruitment and she was kind of quiet for a few seconds before she looked at my hair dryer, looked at me, and told me to come into her room so she could help me with my hair. I found out later that Amy wanted to go to cosmetology school, so I guess she thought that I was using was just not good enough. I took her up on her offer, and wow - she was just amazing. She tried out a couple of different styles once she'd blow-dryed my hair, and finally settled on one we both liked. By the time she was done, my alarm was going off in the other room, so I scampered back over to get dressed. We were told to wear things that we would be comfortable walking around in for Open House, since it's very casual - and extremely hot out that time of year.

I'm not going to lie; I gave more thought to my hair that day than I did to my outfit. A grey T-shirt with a butterfly design on one side a pair of loose-fitting jeans with tennis shoes probably didn't make the best impression. (Amy told me later that she was so tempted to throw out the shoes once she saw them, and actually tried to sneak into my room to do it!) I did have a necklace I was really proud of, though - my biological dad, who I'd always been pretty close to even though I hadn't seen him face-to-face in years, had sent me an antique key on a chain for my fourteenth birthday. Apparently the key used to belong to my grandma on his side, and that had belonged to her mom, and so on... she'd given it to my aunt, who'd held onto it in case she had any daughters, but she's only had two sons - so she gave it to my dad to give to me. I'm kind of surprised she didn't give it to my other uncle, who had two daughters, but they'd both been getting jewelry from the other side of their family for years, so maybe that was why. All I knew was I loved it. (And as an aside: It makes me so happy these days when I see key-necklaces. I love love love them. I have quite the collection now. XD)

With a little more time to spare than I thought I'd have, I went down to the cafeteria to have a nice, relaxed breakfast instead of the sit-down-for-ten-minutes-and-eat-quickly one I'd been planning on originally. Tessa was at her mom's house and was going to be eating there, so we didn't expect to see each other until the end of the day. Finally, it was almost 11:00... I cleared up and headed upstairs to one of the university meeting rooms to meet my Rho Chi group, excited and nervous all at once. I was the third girl from my group to get there, other than Amber of course, and we made small talk while we waited for everyone to arrive so we could get started. Once our entire group arrived, Amber gave us little gift bags - they were full of things like breath mints, mini-notepads, hard candies (she wanted to do chocolate, but was afraid that it would melt), and a pack of inexpensive bracelets for each of us. There was also a stack of notecards, on which we were to write our names and decorate them any way we wanted - we'd be handing these to the Rho Chis before entering each house so that they could give them to the actives, which I guess was our way of signing at each house we stopped at. I have this habit of doodling when I'm nervous, too, so I drew my face next to my name, which Amber said was really cute when she noticed. A few of the girls sitting next to me asked me to do them, too, while we were waiting, and I did.

Finally, finally, everyone was ready to go. Amber led us out with two other Rho Chi groups and their counselors, and they explained as we were walking that half of the sororities (Squirtle, Eevee, and Meowth) were on one side of the campus, facing out to the main road - these were the sororities with more "traditional" houses, meaning that they actually looked like houses instead of dorms. The other three (Pikachu, Bulbasaur, and Charmander) would be on the other side of campus, on the actual Greek Row and near some of the fraternity houses. A lot of the houses over in that area had been converted from ROTC housing awhile back - I don't remember exactly when. I remember being kind of surprised at that, and I remember not really being sure what to expect. Everything seemed like an adventure and I couldn't wait to get started. Neither could most of the girls in my group and in the other two groups. Even Julie, who was so quiet the day before, was chatting animatedly with some girls she knew from the other groups. I still think that it might have been possible, just maybe, to literally taste the excitement in the air.

Before we knew it, we were outside of our first house. Amber and the other two Rho Chis explained that we couldn't take our purses inside, so we should freshen up while we were waiting and drink some of the water that was set up in coolers - it was very, very hot out. We did so and ended up milling about outside the house for a few minutes until they instructed us to hand them our cards and line up in alphabetical order by last name. My last name starts with one of the first few letters, so I was close to the front but not the first one to go in. We lined up, the Rho Chis went up to the door, waited... and finally, at 11:30 on the dot, they knocked and immediately stepped back. The doors swung open, and we were ushered inside to...

Oh, yikes, this post is getting really long. I'm going to post this up now, type up my experiences at the other five, and then move the bit about the Eeevee Open House to the top of the next post once I get it up. Sorry for rambling so much!

EDIT: Ok, I've moved Eevee to the next post, along with the others.

[AZTheta]

I always thought it was very interesting to put a CalState campus so close to UCSB. *shrug*

[UGAalum94]

AzTheta, huh?

I don't know my West Coast stuff enough to get what you might be hinting at with the comment along with all the quotes.

[AZTheta]

CSUCI = Cal State University Channel Islands in Camarillo CA, just south of Santa Barbara. Not a huge population base in that area of CA.

QFP - because someone will complain if it isn't and then something disappears for one reason or another. I can always go back later and edit it out, right?

[Althea]

I guess they figured they'd be able to pull enough students, especially from Camarillo. To my knowledge, a large number of Adolfo Camarillo High School grads end up at CSUCI just because it's so close, and since Cam High's a larger high school they seem to do okay.

You wouldn't believe some of the attitudes towards UCSB in Camarillo, though. I was there last month for a visit, and it can get kind of scary when you ask where people are considering going! I never thought I'd hear "CSUCI, where else is there?" before last month.

EDIT: Then again, many of the people I talked to about it had grown up in Camarillo, so there was a high amount of pressure on them to attend CSUCI. Many of the Cam High students who had moved in partway through high school ended up going to other schools in the state or even other states entirely.

[victoriana]

Originally Posted by Althea

I guess they figured they'd be able to pull enough students, especially from Camarillo. To my knowledge, a large number of Adolfo Camarillo High School grads end up at CSUCI just because it's so close, and since Cam High's a larger high school they seem to do okay.

You wouldn't believe some of the attitudes towards UCSB in Camarillo, though. I was there last month for a visit, and it can get kind of scary when you ask where people are considering going! I never thought I'd hear "CSUCI, where else is there?" before last month.

EDIT: Then again, many of the people I talked to about it had grown up in Camarillo, so there was a high amount of pressure on them to attend CSUCI. Many of the Cam High students who had moved in partway through high school ended up going to other schools in the state or even other states entirely.

I grew up in Southern California, and more than a few of my graduating class ended up at Channel Island. It is one of the smaller CSUs, isn't it?

[Althea]

Originally Posted by victoriana

I grew up in Southern California, and more than a few of my graduating class ended up at Channel Island. It is one of the smaller CSUs, isn't it?

Yes, that's right. I'll admit it - I was so convinced that I was going to CSUCI with my friends that I didn't really consider many of the other CSUs, but my parents and grandparents have told me that most of the others are bigger.

My cousin, who's just starting his senior year of high school this year, has his sights set on CSUCI. I'm hoping it'll grow, but with the budget cuts and the program cuts they're going through, I'm not too sure.

[AZTheta]

OK, as a UCSB alum... I have to say that I've heard just about everything there is to hear about UCSB and I must say that I got an incredible undergraduate education there. I'm grateful for the University of California system and what it provided me, because I couldn't afford a private school anywhere. now back to your story, damnit! Please!!!

[victoriana]

Originally Posted by AzTheta

OK, as a UCSB alum... I have to say that I've heard just about everything there is to hear about UCSB and I must say that I got an incredible undergraduate education there. I'm grateful for the University of California system and what it provided me, because I couldn't afford a private school anywhere. now back to your story, damnit! Please!!!

You are just a firecracker today AzTheta! Between this and the rec letters thread, I'm thoroughly amused

[AZTheta]

Originally Posted by victoriana

You are just a firecracker today AzTheta! Between this and the rec letters thread, I'm thoroughly amused

OMG, OMG, did I take my Concerta? Apparently NOT! That's IT, I'm stepping away from the keyboard, now! Althea, get on with your story, I promise I'll not come back again.