‘Tis the season. The season where all over the country, girls and guys involved in Greek life on campuses are preparing for the most important time of the year: recruitment. The time of year where our Instagram feeds are filled with pictures of girls covered in glitter, sporting their new letters with the caption “found my new home.”
I attend Indiana University, and here, we do things a little differently. We only have sorority recruitment second semester. While some girls have to go back to school early in the summer to get ready for rush, we have to go back early from winter break.
As a freshman girl going into college, it was a little frustrating at first. It sucks seeing all of your friends from other colleges joining sororities and automatically making 100 new friends the first week of school. We all kept an open mind and suffered through a semester of sketchy house parties and we tried to make friends wherever we could.
Personally, I became very close friends with the girls on my floor, similarly to many other freshman girls at IU. I also was forced to get involved in clubs to stay busy and make friends in my classes. This has had such a positive impact on my experience in the long run. While at first waiting a whole semester to rush seemed like such a long time, I believe that waiting to rush until second semester was so much better for a number of reasons.
The most prominent reason is that we are forced to make other friends first. You should not have to join a sorority to make friends. You should already have friends and then join a sorority because you want to. Now, it is so much more fun having close friends in other houses and it brings Greek life closer together. I have friends in almost every other house on campus, and friends that aren’t even in houses at all. This prevents us from only ever having friends in our sorority and never knowing anything else.
Rushing second semester is also beneficial because it gives us a semester to get settled in. Moving away to college, there are already so many other adjustments to be made. Joining a sorority right away can add even more stress to the process. This allows us to become adjusted to our classes and form good habits right off the bat. It also made us get involved in other things so in the future, we aren’t only involved in our sorority. We must be well-rounded.
By waiting, we also got a semester to be dumb freshmen. Coming to college, everyone thinks they know what they are doing, but they don’t. We got a semester to be dumb and make mistakes without that reflecting on our sorority. No matter how ready they think they are, no first week of first-semester freshman girl is ever truly prepared for a fraternity party. Now, we still talk about the dumb things we did at random house parties.
As a sophomore, it is also nice now having a semester to live in the house without having to worry about recruitment quite yet and without having babies to take care of and worry about. PNMs usually take some time to figure out how to act and what to expect from Greek life, and we don’t have to worry about teaching them those things quite yet. We have a semester to live in the house and enjoy ourselves.
Overall, I feel that rushing second semester has way more positive effects than negative ones. As a freshman girl, it can feel like recruitment is so far away when your best friends from home are already getting to experience Greek life. However, it is fun to have something to look forward to for the second semester and in the meantime, first semester freshman year is still a blast. It’s all about what you make of it. When it comes down to it, once you join your house it will be so worth the wait.
