Hello GCers! After talking to Honeychile, I’ve decided I’m going to put up my colony recruitment story! It’s definitely not the same as formal recruitment, and I’m sure each sorority does it differently, so feel free to comment about that! I’m not going to name the other sororities involved because that’s not important. I’m home and that’s what matters.
I’m going to go chronologically otherwise I am going to forget everything and make you all royally confused. I’m also going to split this up into 3 posts to make it manageable to read. Here we go!
Freshman year was rough for me as I go to school 6 hours away from home. I knew only 4 people and I’d gone to a very small high school so throwing a little introverted fish like me into that big of a pond took some adjustment. I eventually figured out I wanted to go through recruitment and my girlfriends on the hall who were in sororities encouraged me. I found out that we would be getting a new sorority that coming fall and heard the name but didn’t think much of it.
Summer came and the new colonizing sorority created a website for our school, so I checked it out. I loved their values, the colors matched me so well (how “sorority girl” of me to say that), and I liked them a lot. But I knew that we had plenty of established chapters and wanted to pursue that first.
Fall came, and so did formal recruitment. We had 10 chapters at that point with a 5-day recruitment (2 open house days, philanthropy day, skit day, and Preference Night). I went in super excited and tried to make a good impression.
My Rho Gamma called me for Philanthropy Day, and said I’d only been called back to 2. I liked one of my callbacks a lot and had made a great connection there, but I was shocked and hurt. I did my best to put that aside and went to those houses and had a good time.
Skit Day came and my RG called and said I only got called back to one, the one I’d liked since Open Houses. I stayed positive, went to the party, and thought I’d done well and had fun.
My RG called on the morning of Preference Night and said I'd been released, and offered me any help she could give, mentioned a leadership org we have on campus I might get involved in, and also mentioned the new sorority and said I could get on an interest list for them.
I had a good cry (or three), went through the stages of grief, and had a healthy dinner of fries and a half pint of ice cream. Once I had gotten myself together, I called my Rho Gamma back and said I’d appreciated her help during that week and wanted to go on the interest list for the colonizing sorority.
Bid Day was the next day and I had to avoid Facebook to keep from seeing the happy pictures from my affiliated friends go up (I saw one photo and the crying started again and I was not going to eat any more Ben and Jerry’s!).
I knew as a sophomore my chances were going to be much different from an incoming freshman's, especially when 800+ women signed up for recruitment. I'm not the best at being uber-social with strangers so I probably came off cold or guarded. So it was just a sucky situation and I had to acknowledge both sides' flaws and move on.
About 2 weeks passed, and the colonizing sorority started tabling out on our Commons (big campus circle where everyone advertises/fundraises). I liked the two Leadership Consultants who were there and spoke with them twice, but I was still shell shocked from formal recruitment so I tried to stay guarded. I picked up the recruitment schedule and committed to trying this out. What did I have to lose? I’d spent my freshman year and all of sophomore August/September not in a sorority so I knew I could live without being Greek and my life would go on.
I will post again tomorrow the second third of the story, and the last third will go up Friday or Saturday, depending how busy my life gets!
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