Quote:
Originally Posted by graciegiraffe07
wow, out of like 19 replies THREE people actually tried to answer my question.
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That's actually not all that bad...considering. A few baseless accusations, a North vs South debate, and three actual responses is pretty much par for the course on Greekchat.
I've read both of your threads and I hope I can help a bit. As someone who also has social anxiety (as well as some other "fun" things) your situation sounds very familiar to me. It makes perfect sense to me that you don't yet know much about sororities and how they work.
As honeychile mentioned, when you're a New Member of a sorority you'll have weekly meetings with your pledge educator as well as projects, parties, possibly a retreat, etc. If the sororities are housed, you will more than likely have dinner at the house on the nights that the sisters have their meetings. You might also have required study hours. It will be the most intense and time consuming at the beginning. Depending on the sorority, your New Member period will last about 6 weeks.
Philanthropy projects will not be done on a weekly basis. Again, depending on the sorority, there might be one big event once a year or a number of smaller events throughout the year. You'll also be expected to show up for a number of philanthropy events put on by the other sororities and fraternities on campus.
Once you've been initiated, there will be weekly meetings (usually held on Monday nights) which could last about 2 to 3 hours depending on what's going on. Socials/mixers/exchanges (or whatever they call them on your campus) with a fraternity might happen every other week or every 3 weeks. Sometimes these are mandatory. (They used to be back in my day.)
There will be times during the school year when you can expect to spend a considerable amount of time with your sorority. One of those will be during Recruitment. This could be a full week of preparations beforehand in addition to the actual week of Recruitment which doesn't end when the parties do. Meetings held afterwards when you're doing Membership Selection can and often do last until the wee hours of the morning.
Other busy times will be Homecoming and Greek Week when you'll be busy getting to know the members of the fraternity with which you're paired, building floats, working on talent shows or whatever. Most events will be mandatory.
A typical week is hard to define. Some weeks you might only have dinner and chapter meeting on Monday and nothing else the rest of the week. Most weeks will be a bit more busy. For example it might be dinner and meeting on Monday for 3 hours, Wednesday night ice-skating with the pledges, Friday night mixer with XYZ fraternity, Saturday sisterhood retreat all day. It will vary.
All in all, it's busy but doable. Many members of sororities have no problem being very active while maintaining extremely high GPAs. Academics are not given the short end of the stick. On the contrary, it will be expected of you to maintain high grades. Failure to do so can lead to academic probation, meaning you will not be in good standing with the sorority.
Being in a sorority can be a lot of work but it will be an experience unlike any other. It's a great opportunity for personal growth. I can't say that someone with SAD will have the easiest time with all of it. It will take a lot of effort on your part. The good thing is that if you find a sorority where you feel comfortable you'll end up gaining a large support group that will care about you and understand your difficulties. I highly recommend that you get yourself prepared and give Recruitment a try. I can't imagine what my college years would have been like without my sorority.
As for treating your condition, (I think you mentioned medications in your other thread) please feel free to PM me. I have an excellent resource for you where you can learn about the different medications used as well as support groups to help you get through the tough times.
I wish you all the best.
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