When I was coming out of high school, I really wanted to be a Greek.
My first year of college was at the University of Minnesota and for some reason I didn't rush. To this day I don't know why. It likely turned out to be a good thing though, because U of MN was a bad fit for me overall, and after a frustrating year, I returned home to Wisconsin and began attending the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. Greek life there is so weak as to nearly be nonexistant, so I did not rush there.. that and the guys who I knew were Greek weren't the kind of guys I got along with very well.
Parkside also was a bad fit, so eventually I changed to a community college in my hometown of Racine. There, I finally got my act together and got my associate degree in Marketing. Needless to say, being a comm college, Greeks were nonexistant.
Back to Parkside for another year, where I put together two semesters on the Dean's List to restore my GPA to a 2.6. With my academic integrity restored, I decided to transfer to the University of Wyoming, a school I'd looked at in my senior year of high school before deciding to go closer to home.
Rush week for fraternities has started this week. Out of the four houses I visited last night, one I don't want to join because they don't have a house. Cool group of guys, but I want the fraternity house experience.
Another house, the guys and I meshed okay, but to my part, they seemed very arrogant and egotistical. Not the kind of situation I want to be involved with.
Third house, the guy who toured me around seemed cool and I'll admit to having liked the selectiveness of the fraternity. Furthermore, the ideals they were looking for (or so they said) were ones that I matched up with perfectly. So I went back to my dorm to get some cash for the buy-in of the poker night they were having, thinking okay, this is who I'm going to rush hardcore for. Went back and I was ignored entirely. It was like I wasn't even there.
So okay, no problem. The fourth house, I'd meshed really well and was quite conversational with the guys there during the 20 minute meeting, something that I'm not usually. So after leaving House #3, I went back to this fourth house and talked with some more of the members, some I'd met during the visit, others who were new to me. It's a house I have a really, really good feeling about and who will definitely be on my list of 3 prefs for Friday.
Tonight we tour the other four houses.
I have to admit though, I'm awfully nervous. I mean, here I am, I'm 26 years old and I'm rushing for the first time. Like I explained to the houses, creditswise I'm a senior, but because a lot of the credits were garbage ones and lower division, I'm here for at least another two years.
But then I've read on this board about how the fraternities favour underclassman over us relatively old goats. So I have to confess I'm a little worried that my age and time remaining might impact my chances, though as I say, I got on really well with the guys in that last-mentioned house. Being a transfer student I fear may affect the probability in a negative fashion as well.
Still, I hold out hope that the dream a starry-eyed 18-year old had and that still burns brightly on in this older and wiser 26-year old man may yet come to frutition... and that it will come to pass that I'll become Greek and fall in with a great bunch of guys that I get on real well with and have an absolute blast with.
Thanks for listening to the bleatings of this old goat.
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