Closing the door after the horses bolted

[MaggieXi]

This thought often pops into my head when I read these stories: Is your daughter really heartbroken/devastated/end of the world depressed over an unsuccessful recruitment. Or, are the moms only hearing about it and not seeing that after they get off the phone with daughter, she goes to lunch with a friend or an event with her roomate and is completely fine and happy?

When I went through recruitment I only called my mom to cry about the sororities that cut me, that it was "the end of the world" if I didn't get to pref XYZ. In reality, I was really fine. Yes, I was a little shaken and disappointed, but I was making friends and doing things and my mom still thought I was sitting alone in my room crying about me thinking that a whole group of people didn't like me.

Eventually in a conversation with my mom, she either caught on that I was only being miserable to her because I could be or she was tired of my wallowing in my own self pity. She told me basically to put my big girl panties on, get over it, move on or that she was coming down to withdraw me from school because clearly I was depressed. This was a wake up call to me to stop emotionally dumping on my mother because it was not fair to her at all because it was not reality.

I ended up not preffing the sorority that I thought I "belonged" on or the one that even dirty rushed me. I ended up preffing one sorority that in my 18 year old brain I was too good for and one that I thought was a just "ok" and ended up being very very happy in the organization I received a bid from.

So what I am saying is before moms come here and start complaining about a system that has gotten increasingly better, find out if your daughter is really ok and moving on with her life or is severely depressed. If she is depressed, there are other issues going on. Greek life is not the end all be all of anyones college career.