Welcome to sorority life. You’ve just opened your bid card and see your name written in the middle with the emblem and crest surrounding it. You start running home to your beautiful home filled with 150+ of your new sisters. You get there and now what? You realize you pretty much know absolutely no one. This weird feeling you have and the loneliness you might feel is none other than what are called “Bid Day Blues.”

By now, you either recognize this feeling I’m talking about, or you realize that it’s okay to admit this is normal. If you really think about it, how in the world is it normal to collaborate a new pledge class of 50+ women and make them love each other like sisters? Like many relationships, it takes time and multiple introductions to qualify a relationship as sisterly.

So now that you’ve met a bunch of girls in your new house, you go home and contemplate if sorority life is really for you. The answer is yes. It can be for everyone. You can’t let the awkwardness of a Bid Day define your entire sorority experience. Believe me, Bid Day is awkward for everyone, including current members. We don’t know you just as much as you don’t know us. We want to smother you with love and excitement but we don’t want to scare the daylight out of you. And we’re too scared to tell you how much we love and adore you and want to hug and squeeze you because we just welcomed you home about five minutes ago.

So, yes, this is all normal to feel this way. And if you question whether or not you joined the right house, that’s normal too. Everyone at one point or another has thought, “what if I was in this house instead?” We’ve all second guessed our selves, especially on this first day because everything is so awkward but new and kind of exciting in a terrifying, nervous way. What you have to remember to tell yourselves is that there is so much coming up to look forward to. Not only do you get to meet over 100 girls, but you get to grow closer to your pledge class filled with girls from all over the place. Girls with different stories, different backgrounds, and so many memories to be created with. After you grow close with the members in your house, you then have so many events to look forward to. You have football games to attend with your sisters, date dashes and exchanges with fraternities. Big-Little is right around the corner, and you have a Big waiting to claim you as their very own. And formal, the prom night of sororities that can turn into one of the best nights during your membership.

The next few months will take some getting used to and some settling in just like any other situation that requires an introduction. It will be awkward at first, but you will soon find your place. You will meet the people you will surround yourself with and make the most of your time as a member with. So don’t let the Bid Day Blues from one day define how your time as a member will be. Bid Day is the beginning of something new and exciting that can sometimes be not as happy as you expected it to be. And that’s okay. It’s what you make of it all in the days after Bid Day that counts the most.