Today's the day we find out which of the chapters we visited in Phase A invited us back for Phase B. I don't know what to expect, and I'm a little nervous - we were only at each house for 25 minutes, so that's not a whole lot of time to learn about each other. How are we supposed to make decisions based on such little info so far? In Phase A we visited 16 chapters, and in Phase B we only get to visit 12.
Post Office
We met with the Rho Chis to get our invitation lists. I have fairly good news:
15 out of the 16 chapters have invited me back. I did not get asked back to
Troy McClure.
I know that I should be excited to have 15 houses who asked me back, but I can't help fixating a little on why Troy McClure was the only one who didn't want me back.
As crazy as it sounds, it might have been a little easier to understand if several chapters hadn't invited me back, rather than just that one. Makes you wonder what you said/did there to keep them from inviting you back - its not like they are the "most" exclusive group on campus (at least, not according to Steph and her ramblings about the sorority hierarchy).
But, I bounce back from the minor disappointment, and focus on the task at hand: I have 15 party invitations to 12 parties. I need to decline invitations from 3 houses. Guess Troy McClure did me a bit of a favor in that regard...if they
had invited me back, then I'd need to come up with 4 invitations to decline. 3 is going to be hard enough!
There aren't any houses that I truly
disliked enough to be unwilling to attend a Phase B party. Unlike some people in my rush group, who already have pretty strong feelings about all the chapters already. (Guess its because I live in a primarily upperclassmen dorm - everyone else has preconceived notions about all the groups, where as I know nothing about any of the groups. Other than what my rush group and Steph have all tried to tell me, of course.)
Even though its hard, I have to make a decision one way or the other, so I decide to decline with regret the following invitations:
Waylon Smithers I just couldn't get past the fact that the very first question I was ever asked in this house was what my father did for a living.
Monty Burns I didn't
dislike this house, but it didn't stand out to me either. I wouldn't have minded going back there, but unfortunately I just couldn't go back everywhere I was invited.
Barney Gumble I still feel terrible about dozing off there during Phase A. When the parties are only 25 minutes each, every minute counts, and I missed out on the opportunity to have as much conversation with their members as I did with all the other groups. I wish I had a little more to go on to see how I felt about this house. After all, they were kind enough to invite me back for another chance despite what happened. But, I can't justify keeping them for Phase B just to see if I
might like them, when I have 12 other groups that I already
do like.
I was the last person in my rush group to sit down with our Rho Chis to go over everything. (Like I said, the decision was tough for me!) I told them which chapters I had decided to cut. When I mentioned that I wanted to cut Waylon Smithers, they shot each other a funny look. One of them asked me "Are you
sure you want to do that?" I thought that was a little odd for them to say - got the impression that they were very surprised that someone would decline an invitation to Waylon Smithers. But I confirmed that I was absolutely positive about my decision, and they collected my paperwork. I did the "decline with regret" option, because I wouldn't object to going back to any of those houses again if I ended up not having a full schedule of parties later.
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