So an article has been making the rounds on my Facebook friends' timelines lately-one that places Whitman College at #13 for "Best Greek Life" in the country.

When I first saw it I immediately felt a surge of pride and automatically felt my mouse scrolling over the "share" button. Why wouldn't I be proud? This is a group that's meant so much to me and that I've put so much time into; to see it be recognized on such a level would make anyone swell up with pride.

But just as I'm about to hit the "share" button, I hesitate. I think of my other Facebook friends who will see this. High school friends, hipster cousins, old teachers, people who would judge me for being part of something we’ve all been taught to be against.

In high school, my friends and I were the quirky group. We took pride in being unconventional and out of the mainstream. We watched geeky TV shows and had potluck dinner parties instead of wild ragers. We were weird and proud, outside the mainstream, not like those preppy high school kids we always made fun of. The idea of joining something like a sorority never occurred to me; it was a group of shallow, blonde, white girls with booty shorts and hot boyfriends. A group of pretty girls who valued parties and drinking over academics and intellect. It was not a group I wanted to be a part of.

But here I am, sophomore year of college, as a proud sorority woman. I originally rushed because, while I loved the friends I had made in my first few weeks of school, I wasn’t feeling that instant deeper connection that I was hoping for. I figured that if there was even a chance I could find that through recruitment, it was worth a try.

Through my sorority I have met some of my best friends. I have met women who share my interest in everything from feminism to the psychology of serial killers. I have met women who I can go to parties with on a Saturday night, but more often than not stay back with and watch Netflix. Most importantly, I have made friends with whom I feel supported in whatever I do, who I know I can come to with my problems and be taken seriously, who I can reveal my insecurities to and feel supported and encouraged. I know this all sounds cheesy, and it probably is, but its true.

When I first told my friends from back home that I had joined a sorority, I was careful to hedge my words. I made it clear that this was “different”, that my school was a “special” case, that I still maintained my hatred for “those actual sororities”. But the more I thought about it throughout the year, the more I wondered if I had been right to do so. It is true that my school is especially small and our Greek system isn’t exactly typical, but I think about my friends at other schools ranging from small private schools to gigantic UCs, and a lot of them went Greek. They’re still the same people as before, with just as deep and meaningful friendships as they had in high school-Greek members that the many stereotypes have led us not to expect.

There are some friends who disagree with me, who maintain that Greek life is a bad thing and a shallow thing; then they’ll see the look on my face and add that my particular case is an “exception”. Some of these friends go to Greek schools and hate the culture it promotes at there school. Others have no experience with Greek life, but know from “what they’ve heard”.

Now I don’t mean to say that all Greek organizations are wonderful and that everybody should go through recruitment. It's all a mix of what type of person you are, what type of school you go to, and what types of sororities you find within that school. Some sororities and fraternities absolutely live up to their stereotypes, and some are quite the opposite. But I’d argue that most are somewhere along a vast spectrum between the two; after all, there are thousands of Greek chapters in this country, and they’re not all going to be the same.