IrishPipes' Retro Recruitment Story

[irishpipes]

First stage results

Next day, back at the classroom, our Rho Chis hand us each a sheet of paper with abbreviations for all of the chapters that have invited us back for second stage. We can circle up to 8. It is hard to decipher at first because the list doesn’t use Greek letters in the abbreviations. This was confusing to a lot of us because we were struggling with the Greek letters as it was, and there were so many chapters to keep straight. I have been invited back to:


Carlow
Clare
Donegal
Dublin
Kerry
Kilkenny
Limerick
Longford
Meath
Monaghan
Roscommon
Sligo
Tipperary
Waterford
Wexford
Wicklow



I am pretty happy, but the Rho Chis explain that most people get a lot of invites back after round 1. (Basically, don’t be too flattered.) By this time, Pam and Joelle have informed most of us which houses are popular, ugly, fat, wealthy, etc. I wonder how many rushees they affected? I am a little disappointed that Offaly has not invited me back, and surprised that Galway didn’t, after Julie wrote me that card over the summer! I didn’t really connect at Galway, but my friends Melissa and Kim loved it there, so I wonder if I would have been invited back if Julie had rushed me. Although I didn’t have a good time at Kildare, I wanted them to invite me back just because I assumed it was a good chapter since Mary Lisa was there and Pam and Joelle liked it so much. Anyway, I sit down and quickly circle (in no order):


Clare
Dublin
Kerry
Kilkenny
Limerick
Monaghan
Tipperary
Waterford


Our stages went 22-8-5-3. In my opinion this was ridiculous. I had trouble distinguishing some chapters after first stage, but we had to cut back to 8 so a lot of chapters got cut when I would have loved to have gone back. The “regret with interest” was not available, nor were release figures that prevented chapters from inviting you back when they had no intention of pledging you. I am positive that many rushees confused chapters with similar names simply because the whole process was so huge and overwhelming.