I love reading everyone's recruitment stories, because I was never on the PNM side of FMR (during parties, at least), and it's interesting to hear what everyone thinks about the different houses while they're going through the process.
I want to share my own story because it is nothing like most people's stories--joining a 12-year-old local through informal recruitment and then going through the expansion process. My signature gives away the ending, but sometimes the journey is the reward.
I was not a very social freshman--I was nervous about the changes taking place in my life, and my boyfriend didn't leave for college until a week after I did. Because I went to school in the same city that I grew up in, I saw him pretty much every day through orientation week. I also didn't have a lot in common with my floormates, who were all English/history/philosophy majors. I was a computer science major and had always been a geek through high school. I hung out mostly with guys and played video games. On the last day of orientation week, I went to the Greek BBQ for lunch because it was on my schedule and it was an opportunity for free food. I just went by myself because my roommate was off with her friends and I didn't know anyone else on my floor well enough to ask them to go with me.
Of course, a freshman girl by herself is a prime target for the Rho Sigmas to go after. A girl came up to me wearing a Rho Sig letter t-shirt, and she talked to me about FMR. I had no knowledge of sororities--my parents and older siblings had not attended college, and my cousins who had were all at least 10 years older than me.
I can't recall if I actually intended to go through the FMR process or if I was just being nice to the girl, but I did start to take notice of the Greek letters that people wore. I noted that the president of the College Republicans wore shirts with black and gold K A Thetas, and that a junior named Amy in marching band had shirts with forest green and dark red Z Trident Sigmas. I thought that those two houses would be my top choices, because I recognized the letters. There were still three other sororities on campus that I didn't know anything about, though. Because I didn't have many female friends on campus, I didn't know a lot of the rumors and reputations of any of the sororities.
FMR was pretty late in the semester that year for some reason (around the sixth week of the semester instead of the third), so by the time it actually came around, it was the last thing on my mind. I received an email from the Panhel Recruitment Chair, reminding us all about FMR coming up and the info sessions. I decided that I wasn't going to go through with it after all, because I had made a lot of friends (mostly male, as expected) in my computer science classes, and I was involved in Women of the School of Computer Science and the marching band, as well as continuing to bowl on the weekends in tournaments and leagues with my brother who was a junior in high school.
I didn't regret my decision to not go through FMR, and didn't really think about sororities after that. However, when I first went back to school for the spring semester, I was talking to one of my really good friends from high school who had joined ADPi at her school just that week. She had gone back a few days early for FMR and told me how excited she was to join. I was happy for her, but it did not motivate me to seek out sorority membership on my own.
The week after that, Amy approached me after band practice with a piece of paper and said, "I was Zeta's recruitment chair last semester, and I saw that you signed up for FMR but didn't actually go through. If you're still interested in joining a sorority, we're having events this week." She handed me the paper and I looked at the events on the paper... pizza making, night on the town, a few other events, and a brunch on Saturday morning that was by invitation only. I didn't have a strong feeling right then, but thought that it was really nice of her to personally invite me. I thanked her and went back to my dorm room.
More to come soon...
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