People love to ask why I joined a sorority, but the funny part is they answer the question before I can. "To buy your friends?" they always ask with a laugh. Well I guess you can say I bought my friends, but at least I bought the very best ones.

Trying to find your home in a simple house that sits on the road with random letters that you don't quite understand is a different story in itself. But I didn't have to try to find my home, it found me.

For Recruitment, you're thrown into a world of loud claps, high jumps, and smiles from check to check. 11 different houses with a very similar goal in mind. Philanthropy, sisterhood, swaps, and, most importantly, family. But that's just the beginning of what my sorority gave me.

My sorority gave me my second home.

When I walked into my house for the first time, it was a whirlwind of emotions. This was going to be MY house for the next four years of college. This was going to be the place I would spend endless hours talking with my friends, eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner, singing our beloved songs on a very off-note key, and where I would eventually find my forever friends. The sorority house gave me an escape from the real world. I was back in a place where I could lay on the many couches, watch netflix, and have someone else make food for me. I could study all night and not bother a single soul, except for my many study breaks talking to people about nothing important. The sorority house gave me a place to go when the real world was a little too much. It's my home away from home, truly. It was the place that made being homesick nonexistent.

My sorority gave me my forever friends.

When I look around at the girls that, honestly, the only thing we have in common is our greek letters, I laugh because I can't imagine my world without them now. I don't know how I've made it 18 years without them. From the girl I ran home on Bid Day with, to the girl that I met at the first Swap, to the girl who I was forced to be friends with because our bigs were best friends, to the girl who decided to sit with me at lunch everyday, I literally can't imagine trying to get through a day without them. The best part about my friends is, easily, that I would have never normally chosen them in my life. They are completely different from me, yet we share some of the most crucial qualities. These girls are my world. They are there for me when life is easy and fun and all we have to worry about is the next date party, and they are there for me when life is anything but ideal. They have quickly surpassed friends and become my family. And we may fight, and we may want to kill each other on occasion like any family, but I promise you that when we need each other, they are by my side before I even have to say a word.

My sorority gave me a lot of things. It gave me food when I literally couldn't afford to eat anywhere else (potatoes and Fried Fridays). It gave me happiness when everything seemed to be going wrong. It gave me coffee at 3 a.m. during finals week. It accepted me no matter how broken I was. And it gave me hope for myself.

Join a sorority wasn't a hard choice. I knew about the friends I would meet, and the date parties I would attend. But I never knew about the little things that it would give me that would make a worlds of a difference. It gave me my bridesmaids, it gave me my home, and it gave me a house that sits on a Row with weird letters that now mean the world to me.