The one word I kept hearing over and over again during Recruitment Week at the beginning of the year was "pomping." My first reaction was, "This is all Greek to me." The funny thing? It was. Being in Greek Life at the University of Missouri is both an honor and a privilege that come with responsibility and commitments and one of the biggest is Homecoming. I never really quite knew what exactly Homecoming at Mizzou entailed or just how much that foreign word "pomping" would soon come to be a big part of my first few months at college.

For those non-Greek readers, pomping is the pretty, folded tissue paper on the house decorations each Greek pairing shows off on the Friday of Homecoming weekend. The first week I really had no idea what to expect what this "pomping" was and I was very intimidated to walk into a fraternity in broad daylight to stay in their basement for hours. Looking back my first day was less than stellar. To put it kindly my pomps were a hot mess and I can only imagine what our Homecoming liaisons thought as they scraped them. Even as time went they still were far off from what was expected. Perhaps the only thing that kept me returning to that fraternity basement was the friends I was making.

Let me tell you first hand, you really get to know people in a hot basement working hard to make the task at hand look close to perfect while you yourself look far from it. You get to talking about what classes you're in only to find out you both are in the same lecture hall. You talk about the upcoming social and what you're going to wear and who you're going to bring. You personally relate to the girl next to you who isn't the best pomper either and both get into a routine of folding the papers for the girls who were gifted by God to pomp.

In a fraternity basement for hours on end, you talk to girls who soon become your sisters. Sisters you hang out with at chapter events or that you will walk with in the Homecoming Parade. Sisters you say hi to as you walk around campus or spend your Friday nights getting ready to go out with.

So, thank you pomping. Thank you for turning complete strangers into sisters. For giving me people to hang out with and take cute pictures with in front of our perfect house desc on Homecoming because in each pomp behind us is one pomp more that helped form our strong sisterhood.