When you sit down and really think about it, sometimes people lose themselves in a sorority without even realizing it, while others find who they were supposed to be all along.
I come from a very, very small town just outside of Austin, Texas. I live in the “Gateway to the Hill Country.” Our town has four stop lights. It’s the most beautiful place in the world if you drive around and look.
Our population is 1,788 people, and I graduated with everyone I had known since pre-kindergarten. Our town was the "Friday Night Lights" epitome, a picture perfect town; you either go to college somewhere close by or stay in town and raise a family and get married. That was pretty much my plan. It’s a good plan, something a lot of my good friends are doing and I am so proud of them for it. But it wasn't my plan.
About May of my senior year, I didn’t get into the college I had thought I wanted all along. I was in hysterics because I had applied to five other colleges in Texas that I had no desire to go to, and then one out of state school that I liked, but thought was an aspiration of a silly mind. I came home from school that day and cried on my porch because I realized I was going to have to change my plan that I had carefully crafted for 18 years. My dad took me to the diner down the street from our high school that he always goes to and told me he knew I was here to do something great, so I might as well go find out what it is.
So, I moved to Mississippi to go to Ole Miss. The place where time slows down past four in the afternoon and the humidity sticks to you starting at nine in the morning. I had a serious culture shock when I came here. It was a foreign yet beautifully perfect place to me, and I was twelve hours from home, meaning I couldn’t just get in the car and go back for a weekend. But I don’t care if you’re 30 minutes or 30 hours away from home, going to a new place to live and to be a whole new person is scary.
So when you add recruitment into it, the stress only builds up and boils inside of you. What if they don’t like you? I only have one chance I have to make it count. What if I can’t live up to the standards? What if I’m not pretty enough? What if I can’t think of anything good to say during the rounds? What if I ruin my outfit? What if I packed all of the wrong things? What if I’m not smart enough? What if I choose the wrong house? What if I get cut from everything? What if I have two houses I love equally? What if no one loves me?
You are enough. You are good and beautiful. As long as you are yourself, the rest comes on its own. You don’t have to impress anyone, just impress yourself and continue to impress yourself for the rest of your life.
That’s why I liked Kappa Kappa Gamma. You hear that stereotypical saying of, “Find your home away from home.” There’s a reason that’s a common saying. I needed to; I was scared to death I was going to be alone in the middle of Mississippi for four years. During rush, Kappa was my last house on Greek Day. I was exhausted. I was terrified, but ready to climb into bed and turn off the outside world. Not a soul knew me at Ole Miss and I was under the grid going into sorority rush. I walked into Kappa and I perked up because they weren’t judgmental or upset that I was tired, because we were all tired. The one thing about Kappa that is probably my favorite part is that we are real. We’re not here to “put on a show” for you; there’s no time for that. You can dance and sing all day, but I want someone I can call whenever I need them. They make sure you know how they feel and they want to make sure they know how you feel too.
Pledging Kappa was the best thing that happened to me at Ole Miss.
During my first semester I almost transferred. I had a hard time fitting in. I was always nice to everyone and they were nice back, but I felt like I wasn’t getting what everyone else was at Ole Miss. One day I was sitting in our piano room and I was studying for a huge test that I was just not going to pass and I started to cry because, well, sometimes you just have to. There was this older Kappa in the room who was sitting across from me. Now, the "older” girls will always intimidate you, just like in high school. You feel like they’re perfect and in their own little realm of perfectness. I didn’t know this older Kappa; I was still relatively new to the sorority. She was one of the pretty, perfect, "everyone is secretly jealous of your life" girls. But she and I sat there for 45 minutes and talked about why I was having a bad day and why I felt alone when I was surrounded by 400 other girls with the same t-shirt on. And after that, I realized that a sister is a sister no matter where or who you are.
Slowly, it got better. I began getting more involved, I made a point to eat lunch with different people every day. It's silly, but you need to do it. And I still remained myself. The more I got involved and the more Kappas I met, all of my anxiety of not being able to fit in slowly melted away. I decided to run for a position on Chapter Council and for organizations on campus, and I actually won because my sisters wanted me to win and wanted to support me because I supported them.
You will not immediately have 400 new best friends all at once after bid day. That’s the myth that everyone believes. No one is "that popular." At Kappa, there is no popularity contest. There is you, and you are good enough and you are surrounded by girls who think you are good enough too. It takes time, especially if you’re like me. But if you’re in Kappa, you can come cry in the study room and there’s always someone there for you. And that’s really what everyone needs. It’s easy to be there for people during the good times, but not so much for the bad. You have the most wonderful and kind hearted girls when you come home to KKG and you find yourself all over again. I didn’t have to change myself to fit in, Kappa let me stand out on my own and cheered me on from the sidelines. You will feel lost at times, but Kappa has this beautiful way of keeping you up when you just want to fall down.
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