“I know I don’t seem like a sorority girl.”

I caught myself saying this a couple weeks ago. In my oversized T-shirt, Nike shorts and gym shoes, I started to utter the words, “I don’t seem like a sorority girl.”

Incredible.

It’s just a habit. Even when I told my friends from high school that I was going to college early to rush, they looked at me like I was crazy. The girl they knew for so long as someone who participates in book club, wears bowties to school, never gets tan because she’s playing the Sims, and watches Captain America in her Captain America sweatpants — in their eyes, that girl was not a sorority girl.

And even in my sorority T-shirts, I still feel like that high school girl, the one who felt like a spy going through formal recruitment. I didn’t want to be caught as an imposter, but I also felt like anyone would look at me and know I didn’t belong. Why didn’t I feel like a sorority girl then? Why do I still not feel like a sorority girl over a year after getting my bid?

I know a lot of girls either new to their sororities or thinking about rushing feel the exact same way. There’s an image you feel like you have to live up to in order to be in a sorority. You feel like, somehow, everyone else has figured it out. They’ve got the look and style. They’ve got the attitude and the boyfriend. You hate how perfect she is, but you want to be her. I had to admit to myself at some point that I was saying that I don’t feel like a sorority girl because I didn’t want people to see me as a sorority girl. I wanted to be different. At the same time, I wanted to be just as perfect as them because I didn’t feel worthy of wearing the same letters.

Though, as I’ve learned, every girl in a sorority actually is different. All my sisters are just as weird as me, though some hid it more than others. They’re all imperfect and insecure, too, even if I felt like they had it all figured out. Being in a sorority means opening up to my sisters and letting them accept me as someone who’s just trying to get through these crazy years of college. I get to accept them, too. But when I feel caught between my high school self who saw sorority girls as a stereotype and this strange new girl desperate to fit that stereotype, I lost the person in between.

Coming from someone who now dyes her hair, gets a healthy tan and wears what every other sorority girl wears, maybe this sounds a little hypocritical. But playing with images is fun. Try doing what other girls do. Don’t be jealous of those who seem better than you, but look up to them, instead. These are your role models. Don’t be afraid to change and emulate them. But do whatever makes you different, too. Be yourself, be honest, and be weird. Even if your sisters don’t get it, they’ll support you. And let stereotypes die because I’ve never met a single ‘sorority girl’ in the last year. I’ve met a lot of very different girls with a lot of different strengths and weaknesses.

So this all to say that you are not an outlier or exception because you feel like you don’t fit the idea of a sorority girl. There’s no such thing as a sorority girl. When you join a sorority, you join a system designed to support a bunch of women who are going through the scary experience of college together. But maybe, if we stick together, we can all be a little less scared together.