If you asked me this time last year if I was in a sorority, I would have laughed right in your face. If I saw this article on my timeline this time last year, I would have scrolled right past, rolling my eyes into the back of my head. I hated sororities, I poked fun at them, even mocked them. I can now admit I knew absolutely nothing about them, not even a little. All the information I gathered about what I thought Greek life was about was from movies, TV shows, and "Total Sorority Move." I knew nothing about this world until I was sucked right into it.

When I heard that Delta Phi Epsilon was coming to my campus, I thought nothing of it. My friends dragged me to an info session at the end of last year and I sat there blankly staring at the wall. Fast forward to September 2015, my friends hauled me back to yet another information session about DPhiE. This time though, they would be starting to look for the 64 girls who would be lucky enough to become founding members of the Alpha Theta chapter at Stockton University. Standing outside those classroom doors with close to a hundred girls waiting to scurry inside, I was truthfully annoyed. I couldn’t think of a worse way to spend my time than sitting inside a classroom learning about a sorority with a bunch of girls. Fortunately, somehow, some way, DPhiE broke down my stubborn brick walls and completely mesmerized me. I fell in love with this organization within 60 minutes. I was hooked and I wanted it bad.

The day I got my bid into Alpha Theta is a moment in time I will truthfully never forget. Standing in that room with those 64 girls, I knew my life was about to change forever. And boy was I right. Fast forward to today: Delta Phi Epsilon changed me in the best way possible.

Within the first few months of being in Alpha Theta, I grew more as a person than my entire 21 years of life. Because of DPhiE, I gained more responsibility, learned leadership skills that I will use for a lifetime and matured more than ever. For some reason my chapter saw something in a girl they hardly knew. They believed in a werido who stood before them out of breath and sweaty, giving them a speech about everything I thought they wanted to hear. They trusted a stranger who had a picture of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler sitting at the ‘Weekend Update’ desk on "Saturday Night Live" on the back of her speech to help lead them in all this craziness. For that, I am truly thankful.

Thank you girls for giving this total spaz a chance to become a better version of herself and electing me to be your founding vice president of programming. Thank you to my entire chapter for showing me that when you throw 89 girls together, something extraordinary can happen. Thank you for helping shake up Stockton’s Greek life. Thank you for supporting me, loving me and accepting me for the psychopath that I am. Thank you for being my home away from home and making me fall even more in love with my school. Thank you for letting me know that if I ever needed anything from an iPhone charger to a ride to the hospital, I will always have someone there for me.Thank you for being everything I didn’t even know I needed.

This section I am personally dedicating to Lauren Gesualdi and Vicky Nucci. Two women who, no matter how much I annoyed them, pissed them off and drove them crazy, never gave up on me and always supported me. Thank you for not murdering me, even though you’ve probably thought about it! Lauren, thank you for giving me the gift of Delta Phi Epsilon. For some reason, you chose me to be part of the founding class and for that I am always indebted to you. Thank you for working tirelessly with me and the rest of the LT members to finish our Petition to Charter in such a short amount of time. Thank you for helping colony Phi become the Alpha Theta chapter it is today. Without you, I’m not sure what we would be. Thank you for teaching us everything about Delta Phi Epsilon and what being a Deepher is all about.

Vicky, thank you for not strangling me this year, I will never know how you fought the urge to do so. Thank you for being my right hand man during this entire experience, even though I didn’t vote for you J. Thank you for your endless support, talking me off the ledge multiple times and the infinite amount of help you gave me this year. Without you I would have completely drowned. Thank you for listening to me whine and complain more times than I would like to admit. Thank you coming shopping with me 20,000 times for ANAD Week and Deepher Dude, buying more supplies than Michael's had to offer. Thank you for watching me and helping me grow into a more responsible, reasonable and kind of levelheaded person that I needed to become. In the end, thank you for being a role model to me and our entire chapter. You will forever be my president. Without you this year, I would most likely be in jail, or dead, or both.

Lastly, thank you to Delta Phi Epsilon for giving me an opportunity of a lifetime. Thank you for giving me skills I never thought I needed. Thank you for being an organization that is all about empowering women, an organization that lifts women up instead of tearing them down. Thank you for the endless opportunities you give us to become better leaders, and for letting us raise money and awareness for Cystic Fibrosis and The National Association of Anorexia and Associated Disorders. Thank you for completely changing my life for the better.

This time last year I would have burst out laughing if you asked me if I was in a sorority. If I could, I would go back in time and slap myself right in the face for doing so. You truly have no idea what it is about until you are a part of it yourself. I learned in these past months that being in a sorority is nothing like it is on TV or in movies. It is so much more than that. Being in a sorority is dedicating your time to your community by lending a hand at The Polar Bear Plunge, or doing arts and crafts with the elderly at Sea Shore Gardens. Being in a sorority is spending months planning events that will help raise money for your philanthropies, so a child can have more tomorrows. Being in a sorority is having another family, another support system, another love. Less than a year of being in Delta Phi Epsilon and I have become a better version of myself that I didn’t even think I could become. Less than a year later, and Alpha Theta has already been recognized for all their accomplishments not only at Stockton, but by Delta Phi Epsilon headquarters, taking home not one, but three awards at our national convention. I am so proud to be a part of Delta Phi Epsilon and to be a part of Alpha Theta. Thank you for changing my life in such a short amount of time. I cannot wait to see what happens next.