A PNW recruitment

[ChioLu]

Wow, a paradigm shift!
Niece’s attitude has changed from “very picky” to “let’s find the good in the remaining choices”.

[FSUZeta]

Lawdy, I was glad I was seated when I read what DD4 called about! I think the professor deserves the swift kick.

[PiPhiERDoc]

More! I’m having the best time trying to guess these chapters.

In defense of your niece...I think recruitment is so overwhelming and all the chapters at big schools like UW are all so impressive that you’ve got to pick something to rank them? And I recall at 18 thinking some of the letters just “didn’t look right” on sweatshirts. Because that’s IMPORTANT ������*♀️

[NYCMS]

Originally Posted by PiPhiERDoc

In defense of your niece...I think recruitment is so overwhelming and all the chapters at big schools like UW are all so impressive that you’ve got to pick something to rank them? And I recall at 18 thinking some of the letters just “didn’t look right” on sweatshirts. Because that’s IMPORTANT ������*♀️

LOL. Back in my day I remember some PNM's were influenced by how good a house's skit was (round 3 at my school)...the costumes, food, if the skit was actually funny or if was, God forbid, flat or corny. I knew girls who would dislike a house - to some degree - if they didn't find the house attractive enough. Never knew anyone who judged a sorority based on how the letters look, but I can get that. Oh, the ways an 18-year-old can think at times.

And I'm looking forward to the rest of this story...I feel like I'm right there just as I did with DD3's and DD4's rushes.

[ForrestGrump]

At my college, we had four NPC chapters, three of them with two-letter names, and one with three letters. This was back in the day when Greeks wore a lot of twill letters - on hoodies, on football jerseys and across the rear end of their sweats. I never thought about it during rush, but afterwards I was glad my sorority had only two Greek letters, because having three large twill letters plastered across one's rear end had a tendency to make the area look considerably wider.

[MotherRusher]

OMG I want the rest of the story! This is freaking fantastic!

[ladybug12]

IMO, the best thing NPC has done in the last 20 years beside implementing RFM was doing away with skit day. As a chapter adviser and national officer in the membership department, I grew to hate the hours and hours of skit practice that chapter members spent rather than having time to practice conversation or the preference ceremony.

[carnation]

As a Panhellenic adviser, I have seen dozens and dozens of reaaaalllyy baaad skits.

[33girl]

As with many things, I think something good - 10 minutes of a goofy takeoff on the Wizard of Oz during which rushees could sit and relax, not worry about conversation, and have a breather and a few laughs - morphed into Andrew Lloyd Webber-esque proportions and the original point was completely forgotten amongst all the competition. It’s easier to stress about whether your Tin Man costume was authentic enough than it is to stress about why the rushee you loved and thought loved you back dropped your chapter out of the blue.

[TriDDDeltgirl]

I’m writing the last installation, my sister in law turned up at the last moment uninvited and I’m trying to decide whether I should leave a gaping whole or just fill y’all in with all the drama. Niece’s mother was a music scene and Niece’s sister was a black eyeliner and the truth came out abruptly about why niece didn’t return to BE. SIL turning up was also the reason why most of us fled Seattle early. I’ll post the rest as soon as I can.

[TriDDDeltgirl]

Also, I once was unfortunately subjected to seeing a Splash themed skit, Splash mixed with that ABC family show, Greek, the concept was horrible but the execution was flawless!

[FSUZeta]

All the drama!

[Theta1234]

Can't wait. This may be more exciting than the networks' season premiers that are rolling out right now...

[unarose]

Originally Posted by TriDDDeltgirl

I’m writing the last installation, my sister in law turned up at the last moment uninvited and I’m trying to decide whether I should leave a gaping whole or just fill y’all in with all the drama. Niece’s mother was a music scene and Niece’s sister was a black eyeliner and the truth came out abruptly about why niece didn’t return to BE. SIL turning up was also the reason why most of us fled Seattle early. I’ll post the rest as soon as I can.

I’m definitely interested in the whole story.

[TriDDDeltgirl]

Pref:

The houses:

Coffee
Ferry

I expected Niece to be in an absolute fury but she wasn’t. Grandma and I expected to cower when we were exposed to the full wrath of Niece but she had no wrath. She left for the day and updated us on her houses, Grandma and I started to cook and everyone else started to get ready for the day when a knock came from the door. We answered and it was my Sister in Law.

I don’t think that anyone in my family has a good relationship with my sister in law so when we opened the door, smiles fell all around. It’s not that she’s a bad person, it’s that where she goes, drama follows, she also has a habit of choosing the wrong time to say things.

SIL enters the apartment and it goes silent, dead quiet. SIL is only my sister in law by name, she and my BIL have been separated for the longest time, SIL fights with everyone and so Niece made the decision to not invite her mother to bid day and to not tell her mother the houses she was going back to.

“Aren’t you all going to welcome me?” SIL asked, Grandma was standing with her mouth open, pouring even more coffee into her already overflowing cup, my husband had taken his brother out of the apartment through the fire escape, I was holding the door open, my son had dropped his biscotti, and breakfast was burning.

The first thing SIL wants to know are Niece’s houses, we’ve been sworn to secrecy and although niece is a Music Scene legacy and a black eyeliner legacy, she didn’t like the girls and the house aren’t on her schedule. We don’t know how to gently let down SIL and she’s adamant upon knowing the houses.

Grandma and I knew that SIL would pitch a fit when she heard that neither house was on Niece’s pref schedule and neither one of us wanted to clean up that mess so we kept pushing back telling her and texted Niece what we could to tell her of the sudden development.

Another problem is that Niece isn’t BIL’s biological daughter. Niece was born in Kyoto and is kind of BIL’s adopted daughter as SIL and BIL got together, when SIL flew the coop, she didn’t return until she wanted to drop Niece with BIL, she left both her daughters with BIL and after a few years went by (when the girls were 8 and 13) BIL went ahead and started dating an amazing woman. When Niece’s mother abandoned her and didn’t come back, Niece decided that she didn’t want a stranger stopping in on her life whenever she wanted when she’d had everyone in her family but her mother helping raise her.

The last problem is that SIL came onto the family scene the same time that I did. My husband’s first wife had just died and within 2 weeks of her death, he and I were dating and on the fast track to being engaged once again. No one in his family cared that he and I were together again because apparently the fact that we’d broken up in the first place was “absolutely disgraceful”, so BIL and SIL has started dating and as soon as SIL heard that my husband and I were dating, she immediately accused me of murdering his former wife to get my hands on her husband and children. Did I? Obviously not. I wasn’t in town and I believe that if you love someone enough, eventually they’ll come back to you.

She didn’t like that I’d appeared in the Texas heat in all my trashy glory to snatch away her thunder, she didn’t like how I teased my hair and wore gaudy makeup and nail polish, she didn’t like that I wore high heels to the supermarket, and she didn’t like me. I’ve always liked everyone and so I went ahead and kept on with my life because I wasn’t about to let some woman interrupt my life just because she was threatened by me or because she hated the neon blue eyeshadow that I wore for casual occasions.

I became pregnant with my first child a few weeks after my husband’s wife had passed, it was unexpected but a ring was on my finger and so no one batted an eye, I got my big Texas wedding and I fit into a hideous huge wedding dress. I collapsed and gave birth to a stillborn a few months later, I was alone at home and so my first instinct had been to call SIL since she lived close by before calling my husband since he was far and I didn’t want him to worry, but when I called her, she told me that it was normal to bleed and that I was a first time mother so I didn’t know better than her, and then she put the phone down. She then called Grandma to tell her that I was being dramatic and to complain about me, Grandma and my other sisters in law, Mary and May, ran over and found me mostly gone and the baby completely gone. SIL said that this was my punishment for having murdered my husband’s former wife and that I’d deserved to lose the baby.

My best friends and other sisters in law, Mary and May, decided to take me out East the second I got out of the hospital, I was expecting bright lights and going out every night but I ended up staying with May’s Quaker family, I’ve never been more grateful in my entire life though because if I’d been exposed to the absolute cacophony of NYC, I would’ve had a mental breakdown and being in a place with nothing but cross stitch patterns with unlimited thread and books really put me in the mental state where I was safe and healthy with myself once again.

When I got back to Texas, I settled back into regular life and I was at peace with myself. SIL and BIL’s relationship was falling apart at the seams, her life was deteriorating, I was pregnant again with my first son, and my life was perfect. BIL decided to get some testing done on his daughter because he wanted full custody, the DNA test came back showing that there was no way in heaven or heck that the daughter was his because she was full Japanese, and then I got the call from SIL.

They’d apparently gotten into another one of their legendary fights over this revelation and SIL called me screaming that BIL was going to kill her, I was standing at the window and I could see BIL sitting on my driveway crying with my husband so there was no way anyone was attacking SIL, I turned my attention back to the landline and SIL kept screaming for me to call the police because BIL was attacking her, she was throwing around plates and screaming and throwing herself into things. I stood there on the phone watching as BIL walked into the house for a glass of lemonade with my husband. There was no doubt that it was him. “I am not my sister’s keeper. Please do not call me again unless it is a legitimate emergency.” was my response and as soon as I’d said this, the other end of the phone went deadly quiet and she said “Is this your revenge?” and hung up. She left after that, only returning to drop another baby off to BIL, he waited for a while and started dating a lovely girl when both his girls became older.

Anyway, SIL was on the warpath at our door in real time demanding to know Niece’s houses. I hadn’t seen her for around 20 years and I wasn’t too keen on all of a sudden divulging all of Niece’s personal information. “So, you’re not going to tell me the houses she has? I bet you’re still angry about that baby.” SIL said to me, “Now wait just a moment,” Grandpa cut in, having returned from the farmers market, “This isn’t about some baby, it’s about the fact that you’re returning now when there were so many times you were needed. Graduations, recitals, hospital visits, school plays, field trips. But as soon as you think that your daughter may become a member of your sorority, you magically appear. The worst thing is that she needed you back then but she’s not interested in you at all now.” and SIL promptly turned, slammed the door, and walked off.

Back to the houses!

Coffee:
She was pretty much set on Coffee, she decided that since it had come down to Coffee and Ferry, Coffee was the better choice and she had really thought about the caliber of girls that she’d seen at Ferry compared to Coffee and she decided that there was more to Coffee than met the eye. She also felt more comfortable around the girls at Coffee because they made mistakes, they messed up on part of their pref ceremony but it wasn’t a big deal because they didn’t act like it was the end of the world, they kept it going, the conversations also flowed naturally at Coffee and so Niece felt like she was in the right place and was at peace with her decision to rank Coffee over Ferry.

Ferry:
Ferry had felt mechanical from the beginning, Niece had heard rumors from so many people about Ferry that she didn’t exactly know what to think about the house. She liked the girls but she didn’t feel comfortable around them, she was hearing a lot of talk, and she didn’t like how everything about the house was eerily perfect. She also got weird vibes before the pref ceremony and after the pref ceremony and so she left Ferry thinking that she’d do better as a Coffee.

Bid Day:

SIL was who knows where, the family was headed to the row, and there was uneasiness coming from everyone. We were all trying to keep the fact that there was a possibility that SIL could just turn up on the row and find Niece buried at the back of our minds, everyone was tired, I was freezing cold for some reason, and BIL had flown down to Portland with my husband and father in law since he couldn’t deal with seeing SIL.

Niece was opening her bid and Grandma and I were slowly walking from Starbucks to the row. We assumed that Niece would be a Coffee and so we loitered close by just in case SIL turned up.

When Niece finally arrived at Coffee, bid card in hand, she was in absolute tears. She’d gotten a piece of glitter jammed under her eyelid and so Grandma and I were expected to do some sort of surgery. Niece has mono lids and so getting this piece of glitter out was going to be no easy feat, her eye wasn’t going to cooperate and so we ended up draping her body over some bushes while I held her head steady and Grandma used eye drops to flush her eye out and tried to keep the bushes from collapsing under her. It didn’t work. I turned my head briefly away and I saw SIL strolling up the row and I felt absolute panic in my heart, we were going to have to move the surgery into the house. We told Niece what was happening and she stood up, rolled her eyes at the sudden inconvenience, and the huge chunk of star shaped glitter flew out of her eye and onto her cheek and as soon as we saw this, we shooed her into the arms of her new sisterhood...KAPPA DELTA!

My sister in law’s cousin’s daughter is at pref today at Ole Miss! We are slightly disappointed not to have another Kappa, DG, or Tri Delt in the family but we’re looking forward to welcoming yet another sorority into our family. I’ve been getting updates all week and I think I have a clue which sorority she’ll end up running home to. I’ve got 9 nieces going through winter rush and my wayward nephew-son is rushing in the winter as well. I am enjoying the relative peace of fall before Thanksgiving and my home being filled with dozens of people who all are in need of my attention.

I’m in the middle of nowhere but I’ve already started to fill out rec letter forms because I like having my hands busy. I’ll have girls rushing at SMU, USC, Syracuse, Boston U, and Northwestern. I’m wildly excited but my hands are cramping.