Retro Recruitment:: a brutally honest story

[aprocess]

I have been completely brutally honest in this thread about everything. I always reread my posts (and YES i know there are many spelling errors!!!!) after I post them.

I have not been completely honest about one sorority in the last post. I guess I almost feel ashamed to say why. However, I have chosen to be brutally honest, and I stand by that. The sorority that I did not COMPLETELY say the w-h-o-l-e truth on wassssss:














Marissa Cooper

Yes. I wanted to be a loyal to my friend, but that really was a cop out of telling you GCers why I really did not want to be a part of Marissa (sorry guys, won't happen again, love you!). but there is another reason why I no longer liked Marissa. This is kind of shameful to say outloud unless you know where I am comming from. Like I said in my initial post, I wanted to be amoung a diverse set of girls. Marissa had a stereotype of being pre-dominantly asian. I did not notice it at all my first year because I was blind to it (I never got the chance to hear the stereotypes). However, now that I knew it exsisted, i saw it. I would say about 85% (not true stats at all) were asian. And what makes it worse was that there was one group of caucasions (like 5-6 girls) in the sorority that you could tell were only friends with each other. It was this wierd segregation and it did not make me feel good.

[KSUViolet06]

Originally Posted by aprocess

Like I said in my initial post, I wanted to be amoung a diverse set of girls. Marissa had a stereotype of being pre-dominantly asian. I did not notice it at all my first year because I was blind to it (I never got the chance to hear the stereotypes). However, now that I knew it exsisted, i saw it. I would say about 85% (not true stats at all) were asian. And what makes it worse was that there was one group of caucasions (like 5-6 girls) in the sorority that you could tell were only friends with each other. It was this wierd segregation and it did not make me feel good.

Random question:

How do you not notice that almost every girl in a sorority is Asian? Did it just happen that you didn't talk to any Asian members during your first rush?

[aprocess]

Originally Posted by KSUViolet06

Random question:

How do you not notice that almost every girl in a sorority is Asian? Did it just happen that you didn't talk to any Asian members during your first rush?

During my first recruitment, I was SO clueless toward the entire process. door chanting, pretty glasses of water, beautiful houses. EVERY HOUSE was like disneyland, I just walked in the door and waited 'in line.' I was not looking at race. I was primarily looking for 1) parking for my boyfriend to come visit and 2) a place to party with fun, gorgeous girls. DO NOT get me wrong, the girls of Marissa are gorgeous. Afterall, they fit the bill my freshman year.

But my priorities changed my second year. my boyfriend and I broke up and I spent my freshman year partying. If I wanted to go out, i did not need a sorority to do that. Now I just wanted to find a place to 1) make me feel part of my large campus 2) be proud of: this means that i would be proud of calling myself a _____. I felt like I missed out on a lot of what Cassie got to experience. I wanted that.

Now-my second year- that I knew the stereotypes, I found myself actually looking to see if it was true. It bothered me that the caucasions would hang out with each other and the asian girls had their own group (I saw this at parties I went to during the year). It made me feel uncomfortable.

[33girl]

Originally Posted by KSUViolet06

Random question:

How do you not notice that almost every girl in a sorority is Asian? Did it just happen that you didn't talk to any Asian members during your first rush?

This made me LOL.

But I think it may be - when you're going through rush the first time - especially if the sorority isn't all wearing the same thing, you have a room full of girls and don't always know who is rushees and who is sisters.

And I know it sounds odd, but I DO know what she means about not noticing that all the girls are (tall, Asian, blonde) until you hear someone say it. From her clue she is in an area of the country where there are a lot more Asians in general so seeing them is more common and not something you really think about. It would be kind of like someone saying on your or my campus "did you notice all the RST sisters are Italian?"

[aprocess]

I woke up and went to eat. I remember kind of being lonely. Last year, I went through recruitment in a big group of floormates. Now I was just kind of doing my own thing. Of course I made some PNM friends this year who would meet up with me during the day to talk to me about their schedules and stuff (even though our group leaders 'discouraged' that), but it wasnt the same. I got ready and remember a happy shock came over me. I thought: "in 48 hours, I won't be doing this alone."

I walked out to where we met our group leaders. We were allowed a max of 4 houses. If even one of my top four were on there, then i made myself believe that today would be a great day.

I remembered thinking "I should open up my schedule in the same spot as yesterday, it made me lucky yesterday...". blah, sometimes i think i'm OCD. So I walked towards the sorority houses, paper still folded.

I got to a spot where my nerves felt the most comfortable at and opened up my schedule to see....

[aprocess]

A FULL SCHEDULE!!!!!

Serena
Ryan
Seth
Marrissa

WHY WAS SERENA AND RYAN KEEPING ME?!?! I was so stoked! a 50% chance to end up in an amazing home. That stat made me so happy! SERENA!!!! YAY!!!! I could not wait to step through that dark, cozy house and meet more girls! what sophomore gets a great full schedule??? a lot of the freshman did not even have full schedules!

Reactions to houses that I got cut from:

Blair Waldorf- not too suprised. Cool house. Would have been proud to rep their letters. But was not crying over it. Afterall, I was going through as a sophomore. It's understandable.

Jenny- WHAT???? I wasn't really sad or anything. Just a little suprised, I just thought I made a good impression and I know my floormate was routing for me. Rumor has it that this house usually only takes freshman... well thats what I choose to believe . ha.

[aprocess]

I laid out my dress for recruitment.

Makeup...... check
Purse...... check
Heels...... check
Dress...... check

Sleeping sucked. In my head I thought:

What if that political conversation really messed me up at a chance at Serena?

I loved Jessie, but does she like me or is she faking it?

What if I have bags under my eyes since I am lying awake thinking about this.

I finally fell asleep and work up before my alarm even sounded. While I got ready I thought:

Should I prepare some questions to talk about? Should I have topics to talk about?

What should I talk about?

I literally have exhaused every good topic with Serena. The girls really knew a lot about me. I decided not to think of any topics or questions. If it was meant to be, then the conversation would flow.

I headed out the door and suddenly thought "DUDE WHAT IF SERENA'S NOT EVEN ON MY PREF LIST?!?!?!"

I was scarred to death.

I walked to our meeting place with so many twists in my stomach.

The Group Leaders were being so slow. They knew that a lot of girls were going to drop because their tops might not be on the list. They told us that if they saw us open the pieces of paper they were going to give us with our schedules, that they would take it away. They made a speech that basically told us NOT to talk to each other, this was supposed to be our own personal decision, they said to go to the houses no matter what and give them an equal chance FINALLY she passed out the pieces of paper.

I walked away from the group as instructed. My hand was holding my future. I KNEW if Ryan and Serena were on there, I would HAPPILY be in either organization. I did not walk to my normal 'lucky spot'. I just took deep breaths and then stared at the folded piece of paper.

I opened it and.....






























































































.

[aprocess]

So I was going to write this tonight, but after reading your comments, I couldnt keep you in suspense that long!

I breathed in deep, I needed serena to be on there. I did not know how I had opened up my heart so much in just 4 days. Those girls were seriousily like my sisters. I thought in my head "ok, just open and go!!!"

I op




[phone call one sec]






I opened up my schedule and:

Serena
Marissa

Reactions
Ryan: you all saw it coming. I actually was cluelss at the time it happened. I wasnt stressed out about it at all though. I mean, I came to the realization that I was trying to be someone that I wasn't and just felt like I always had to look prestine. I mean, whats a sister if you cant watch gossip girl/the oc in your pajama's with them? [FAST FORWARD: you guys were right. I made a few friends at ryan post-recruitment. they told me that a few girls really fought for me, but ultimately the girl who was talking to me thought it was tacky to talk about another sorority. how was I to know? I thought I was supposed to talk to them as friends. another LEARNING EXPERIENCE/TIP: you are supposed to be their friend. Afterall, they want to be friends with their sisters, but the reality of the situation is that you have only known them for 20-30 min. They have to work hard to make you like them, that you need to output the same energy. For example, if she talked about seth negatively, I would have thought that she-- and the rest of her sorority-- was a (insert b word).]

Seth: Thank the lord oh might! free at last!

Serena: My heart jumped out of place when I saw them on the list

Marissa: It really made me fell so wierd that they were on my list. I was told that I if you only had one recruitment party that day, and you have completed all the events, then youwere garanteed a bid to the sorority on your schedule. I was hoping that Serena would be the only one (or Serena and Ryan), but now I have to suffer through another sleepless night???? lame. And how am I supposed to make myself look uninterested when I already tried?

I walked to my first party, Serena...

[ASTalumna06]

We just waited forever for that update, and now you're making us wait some more?! ahhhh!

[LucyKKG]

Originally Posted by ASTalumna06

We just waited forever for that update, and now you're making us wait some more?! ahhhh!

Yeah, but at least she finally told us which pref parties she was going to. Pretty sure we would've had a few heart attacks around here if she didn't at least tell that part!

[ASTalumna06]

Originally Posted by LucyKKG

Yeah, but at least she finally told us which pref parties she was going to. Pretty sure we would've had a few heart attacks around here if she didn't at least tell that part!

True true. I just get so impatient with these things!

I need to stop procrastinating and actually do some work