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That's right, another retro thread. . .
Okay, the number of people posting retro threads seems to be dwindling, so I’ll do my part to fill the pre-Auburn vacuum and post my recruitment experience (plus, this helps time move more quickly at work). My story certainly doesn’t have the all the frills of honeychile’s, the graphics of Leslie’s or the humor of Sensuret’s, but I still hope you enjoy it. Before I get to my actual recruitment experience, I think it’ll help clarify what I was looking for and why I made certain decisions if I explain how I ended up there in the first place. Please bear with me as I tend to ramble.
I started college in the fall of 2000 at Umass Amherst and initially had no interest in Greek life. To my knowledge, no one in my family was Greek before me and it wasn’t anything my friends from high school had ever discussed Interestingly, however, two of my closest girl friends from high school also joined sororities at another school and my very best friend to this day says not doing so is her biggest regret from undergrad. But, I digress, so I arrive on campus in September 2000 as a member of the honors college and am living on an honors floor located in the Southwest Residential Area. For those of you familiar with Umass, I’m sure you understand the disconnect of this, and for everyone else, it’s really just odd. Southwest is an area of high density high rises that is known for housing the schools biggest partiers and most of its athletes. Usually honors students were housed in other, less rowdy, areas. However, the honors college apparently wanted to appeal to kids who were looking for a good education & the chance to be in Southwest as well. Never one to pass up a party (something that would become problematic later), I jumped at the chance to live there. Anyway, since I was living & taking classes with all the people on my floor, I quickly became very close to them and didn’t consider many other ways to get involved on campus. I had always been really involved in high school (3 sports, mock trial, DECA, etc.) so college at this point seemed more like a vacation to me; I went to my classes and I went to parties with the girls from my floor.
During this first semester, aside from going to frat parties, I have very little memory of the sororities presence on campus. I don’t know if I’m just forgetting it now almost 7 years later, or if they really weren’t that visible. It probably doesn’t matter what the situation is anyway, because I recognize I probably wouldn’t have been very good at recruitment at that point in my life. As I said, even though I was in the honors college, I was partying a bit too much, which I’ve since gotten over & learned it’s not usually considered desirable in a rushee.
Throughout my freshman year I gradually became more grounded & made friends outside of my floor; specifically with a guy in a fraternity who became one of my closest friends. Second semester, several of my girl friends decided to rush and my interest was piqued. Suddenly, Greeks were all around me. Regardless, I decided not to go through recruitment that semester. In spite of my good friends, my main experience with sorority women at that point had been with a senior in one my classes first semester. I can’t remember specifically why anymore, but I found her EXTREMELY abrasive and stupidly (I know, I know) decided that if she was in a sorority, it probably wasn’t something I was interested in. That semester, one of my friends very happily joined a sorority and I went home for the summer realizing the idea of joining a sorority was growing increasingly more appealing.
Back to work for a bit…I’ll post again as soon as I can.
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