Sorry to keep you waiting, but last night I just came home and crashed after Pref (LONG week), and there was a football game today (yay!), and then I decorated shirts with my soccer team, my little sister came to visit, etc. -- so this is the first time I've been able to sit down at the computer since then!
I was sooo nervous for Friday night, because the way the recruitment system works this year, we don't get our invitations back until immediately before the parties start. This means that you could only get invited back to one house, your least favorite, and if you wanted to drop out of rush you'd have to do it right then and there in front of all the girls in your rush group -- I don't understand that at all. (Not to mention that this means we had to wait several days between First Rounds and finding out who invited us back for Second Rounds!) I figured that no matter which houses invited me back, I would at least go to their Pref parties and then drop out of rush after that, if I didn't like the houses . . . I also was mentally preparing myself to only get asked back to my last choice, just so that if that actually happened I wouldn't start crying on the spot --
I got invited back to three houses, and even though they were my 2-4-5 picks instead of my 1-2-3 picks I considered myself pretty lucky, since a lot of other girls in my group got cut hard. Some of the girls who got invited back to their top 7 during Second Rounds only got invited back to one house for Pref -- that has to be really rough, to be having a great rush and then all of a sudden you go back for your invites and it's the complete opposite.
And so I went back to, in alphabetical order, AEPhi, Tri-Delta and SDT.
House #9: This house has grown on me throughout recruitment, and so it was cool to be asked back here. They fed us some yummy cake with frosting in their colors, and I had an awesome time talking with the first girl (I only talked to two). I do feel a little bit strange at this house because although I feel like I connect really well with indvidual girls in the house, on a one-on-one basis, I don't really identify with the sorority as whole -- if that makes any sense? Most of the girls in this sorority are from the East coast, I'm very Midwestern; a ton of girls in this house are Jewish, I'm not, etc. And I know that shouldn't be an issue, but at this point it does feel a little bit weird. I'm sure that if I ended up in this house I'd grow to be comfortable with it, but it would be a little strange at first.
House #4: This house really grew on me too; I have liked them more and more every successive round of recruitment and I'm really glad they asked me back. I talked with some of the same girls as Wednesday night and just felt really comfortable with them. The house was decorated beautifully with little white lights, and they had us sit at tables with tablecloths and flowers and everything (heh, I was really impressed by this since the other two houses made us balance our plates on our laps). They fed us mint ice cream with a crumbly cookie-type topping and it was so yummy! The girls rushed me really hard here and I just got a really good feeling about the house.
House #1: I had a better feeling about this house last time than I did the first, but last night was not so great again. I had the same conversations as I did the first night, all that "What's your major/Where are you from?" stuff, and nothing more in-depth. After having really good conversations at the other two houses, this was kind of a let-down. Plus, one of the girls I talked to was the same girl I had talked to for part of the First Round party, and she gave no indication that she knew me! I mean, I can understand if she didn't remember anything about me or even my name -- I didn't remember hers -- but she should have at least been able to place my face! The girls who talked to me seemed totally uninterested; they kept looking off in other directions. It made me wonder why they even invited me back in the first place.
So I ranked two of the houses and left my least favorite off -- not quite suiciding, but still more risky than ranking all of them. I think I'll be happy no matter what happens though; if I end up in a house, that's great, and if I don't there's always COB, and I'm so busy with other fun stuff that it won't be a big deal.
Tomorrow is Bid Day -- I'll let you know how things turn out! And once again, thanks to all of you for encouraging me to stick with rush after the cuts and give all the houses another chance, because I'm so glad that I did.
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