Part 2...
My new school is less than 2 miles away from my old school, separated by Main Street. Each side of Main Street is pretty much an entirely different world. The side that my "new" school is on is very much college town central, while the other side of Main Street tends to be more residential. Main Street is lined with bars and such. The two schools absolutely can not be any more different: school #1 (the school you've read about thus far) is very small (like I said before, around 1200 students total) and prestigious. Thomas Jefferson once taught there, and Henry Clay is a graduate. A lot of the students are pretty "old money" and most of them are from in-state. School #2 is an SEC school, huge on sports, and has somewhere around 40,000 students. Both schools have really great Greek Life (school #1 is actually rated number 4 in the country for Greek Life, though with a total of 8 GLO's who are paired up with one sorority to one fraternity pretty much exclusively, I can't say I agree with that ranking... not to say it's not a great Greek Life, just not sure it warrants a rank of fourth best greek system in the country). My draw to school #2 is definitely its variety of activities and diversity of students. Plus, I'm a MAJOR SEC football/basketball fan... let the flames begin
haha
I just wanted y'all to have that background so you can understand what a culture shock it was for me to go through rush at both schools. I can't stress enough how different sorority life is at each place!
School #2 had 12 sororities when I went through recruitment, and three of them are also at school #1.
ORANGE is not at school #2 (yet...
) but
SLATE,
PURPLE, and
LIME all are. What's kind of interesting to me is that they all three have similar reputations at both schools, although as far as I can tell, they don't often interact with their chapter at the other school. Haha.. sorry if I made that last paragraph
really confusing for you. Once again, just trying to provide some background!
Okay, so the 12 sororities at school #2 (in the order that I think of them, nothing specific) are:
SLATE
PURPLE
LIME
RED
YELLOW
PINK
NAVY
BLUE
TURQUOISE
LAVENDER
MAROON
TEAL
Remember that most of the women in my super small hometown were in
RED... many of them are alums of this very same chapter. I actually have five older cousins who are
RED, and four of them are currently in college. So I started recruitment with a pretty good knowledge of what
RED,
SLATE,
PURPLE, and
LIME are all about. I had no shortage of rec's for
RED (I actually had to tell some people to
not send in a rec for me to them, because I didn't want to be "that girl who sent in 15 rec's, haha), plus several rec's for
PINK, and one each for every sorority except
SLATE,
PURPLE, and
NAVY. Needless to say, I exhausted every resource I had to get rec's! I felt like a fish out of water going through SEC recruitment. Although I had gone through rush at School #1 the year before, I still felt completely unprepared.
The first rounds (Open House) were split between two days, so we went to six sororities the first day, and six the second day, and we didn't rank until the end of the second day. This made it a little bit hard because it's next to impossible to remember details to differentiate the first house of the first day from everywhere else.
Every PNM wears the same shirt to the Open House rounds, and I paired mine with denim skirts and Sperry's both days. I made a friend immediately, who we'll call Emily. It was pretty apparent that Emily came from a lot of money (Her graduation present? a brand new BMW SUV. Yeah.)
Our first days schedule looked like this:
SLATE
PURPLE
YELLOW
NAVY
BLUE
TURQUOISE
SLATE: Reminded me sooo much of the girls from
SLATE at school #1. This group is definitely one of the smaller groups on campus, but it didn't really seem it during Open House. I got a vibe from this group that they weren't a very close sisterhood, though.
PURPLE: Okay, so remember that this is the same group that I had a few, ahem, issues with at School #1. They are one of the largest groups on campus, actually at
both campuses, so I was very nervous. I knew I was really
supposed to like this group, if I listened to "tent talk," but honestly, I just didn't really see myself here. They seemed very athletic, which is something I definitely am
not. They are responsible for one of the biggest philanthropy events on campus, which is very cool, but overall, I left feeling a little unimpressed.
YELLOW: Girls, this sorority is one of the very best examples of why tent talk is
wrong! All I heard from the other PNM's was about how this sorority was about to get kicked off campus, and how they were really awkward, etc. When I went to their house, the first thing I noticed was that they all looked genuinely happy to be there. Yes, there weren't very many of them, but the ones who
were
there seemed to be really wonderful girls. I left feeling very, very impressed.
NAVY: Another campus powerhouse, according to the other PNM's. They had a wonderful skit, and were all absolutely stunning girls. I didn't see a single girl there who couldn't have been a model, if she wanted to. I had a pretty good conversation with my girl, but I didn't necessarily feel very strongly about them either way. It was one of those situations where I knew I would love to be asked back, but it wouldn't be the end of the world if I wasn't.
BLUE: I had heard that this sorority was known for it's partying antics. The girl who picked me up at the door was really sweet. We had a very long discussion about "The Hills" (lol) and then she brought me back to the living room for their skit. I
really loved their skit (it was about something that is no doubt one of my favorite things ever), and I found out that their philanthropy is one of my favorite causes. I really enjoyed this house.
TURQUOISE: To be honest, I don't remember a lot about this house, except that it was at the very end of the day and I was exhausted and sweaty from walking around all day in 90 degree heat/200% humidity, haha. I met a girl who was in the same Astronomy class as me, and had a few good conversations, but it was obvious that both PNM's and sorority members just wanted this party to be over. This was another sorority that I didn't really have strong feelings for, either way.
So, with day 1 finished, and
BLUE was my overall favorite. I liked the idea of having a smaller sisterhood with
YELLOW, but talk of them getting kicked off campus worried me (I know, I know... tent talk is BAD).
Day 2 will be here very soon. I'm curious as to whether or not you all have any favorites so far?
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