PNM advice: the importance of personal connections in recruitment

[BraveMaroon]

To give you a different perspective on personal connections - they can work against you, too.

Scenario 1:

There was a house I really, really liked during rush - tent talk was that they never cut anyone, and then, BOOM, after round two, they cut me.

I was so surprised, especially because I knew several girls in the chapter -they had graduated two years ahead of me...with my sister. In fact, they had all been on Dance Team together.

And that's when I remembered that perhaps there had been a little friction on Dance Team their Senior Year with my sister and one of the girls from that sorority.

That may not have been the reason I got cut, but I'm betting it was.

I got over it pretty quickly.

Scenario 2:

The "Do You Know..." game.

I was so guilty of doing this, and it's such a bad idea, but I didn't realize it until I was on the sister side of Rush. This is when you meet someone and find out you have some type of vague connection - they grew up in Anytown, and so did a few people you went to camp with. You ask them, "Do you know Patty Personality? She's from Anytown."

This can go a number of ways - maybe she doesn't know Patty and that's that. Maybe she knows Patty and they're BFFs - great! Or maybe she knows Patty because Patty stole her boyfriend. Or maybe she used to torment "Fatty Patty" on the bus every day in Middle School.

It's so tempting to do because you're in a new place with new people and it feels so good to make a connection - the problem is, you have no idea what type of connection you're making.