Someone asked me yesterday why I chose to be in a sorority. The woman who asked me was with her daughter, who was planning to attend university in the upcoming fall, and she wanted to rush.

As a parent, she was nervous about letting her young, impressionable, and seemingly innocent 18 year-old daughter run wild at university, and from her interaction with numerous movies that stereotype the life of sororities and fraternities, she wasn't sure Greek life was the right path. I have Alpha Gamma Delta stickers over almost everything I own because I joined my sorority only a year ago, and I am completely obsessed with it, so she asked me which organization the letters stood for. I told her, and said that we were the newest sorority on San Diego State's campus. I am not one to miss the opportunity to brag about my beautiful and wickedly intelligent sisters.

Her worries about her daughter and her desire to rush followed, and then she hit me with the big question. Why did I choose to be in a sorority? I've answered the question a million times. "I wanted the opportunity to be involved on campus, I wanted to meet new people, I wanted to be involved in a good cause and I really connect with your philanthropic cause." But when she asked me, I really took a moment to think, mainly for her daughter's sake because although, unlikely, it felt like this girl's ability to rush in the fall depended entirely of my selling of the Greek community.

I joined the Greek community because I felt lost in the shuffle of San Diego State. The school is huge, I wasn't emotionally all there after my relationship completely crumbled at my feet, and I was trapped in what felt like a very dramatic episode of Girls, constantly questioning my future and ability to achieve or even identify my dreams. I was losing hope that my love for SDSU was ever going to come back to me. And then a friend told me Alpha Gamma Delta was going to be establishing a chapter on campus. That day, I emailed the leadership consultants involved in the process. I was overly eager, to say the least, to be involved in something from the ground up, even if I had no real idea what being in a sorority would entail.

I had friends involved in the founding of the newest fraternity on campus, and for better or worse, it changed their lives. I wanted that opportunity. I attended all the rush events, met hundreds of girls whose names I could never remember, and watched YouTube tutorials on how to do my hair because being naturally girly is not in my nature. Amazingly, it worked!

Three insanely long weeks later, I was invited to be a member of Alpha Gamma Delta. The next four months were filled with countless meetings about what it would take to be a founding member of this organization and how we wanted to be perceived on campus. We hosted movie parties, and made crafts and played name games to try to get to know one another. We discovered that coordinating over 100 young women is actually insanely complicated, and that there is no real way to guarantee everyone will read their emails. We found little’s and big’s and made friends with people we never would have imagined meeting, and we discovered that the bonds of sisterhood are a real and complicated thing.

I left to study abroad four months after I joined AGD, and learned that even with people you don't know particularly well, you still feel connected to them from the other side of the world, because that's what sisterhood is -- unconditional and unwavering, filled with forgiveness, and just as cheesy as the movies make it out to be.

I told this woman all of this. I told her how I had found a little who feels like an actual little sister, and whom I would do nearly anything in the world for -- from 6000 miles away. I told her about the different philanthropy events I've been able to be involved in that raise awareness and money for diabetes, a disease that one of my best friends has coped with for a decade. I told her about the mistakes I've made and asked for help with, and the judgment-free aid I received without question. I told her about traveling through Europe with one of my sisters, about wishing more than anything that I could be back with these girls to continue to get to know them, as I would've loved to do all semester, and about feeling connected to something much bigger than myself. 

I equate being a sorority woman with more than bows and loving Starbucks and letters covered in glitter. All of those things are actually magical, and I love making them a part of my life but, for me, being a sorority woman is about being loyal, and strong, and influential. It's about being a good friend and a force to be reckoned with when someone you love gets hurt, being open to diversity and accepting of people's flaws and receiving acceptance of yours. It's about caring and dishing out tough love when it's needed, supporting women and rising up in the world with people we call our sisters. It's about creating a family and adorably decorated mason jars out of nothing, and thriving when life hands you lemons.

Alpha Gamma Delta helped me identify the kind of woman I want to be in my life, the kind of women I want in my life, and I hope that this woman's daughter gets the same opportunity. 

Go Greek this fall at San Diego State University, and be proud to be a sorority woman.