As we get closer and closer to returning to our college lives, we’re also getting closer to recruitment, which is extremely exciting and something I’ve been waiting for ever since I accepted my bid almost one year ago. Being in a sorority has done remarkable things for me and who I am as a person, and as I think about my first year of college and all of the memories that I made with my sisters, I think about who was by my side the whole time: my roommate.

It began at orientation the month before school even started when my soon-to-be roommate and I stalked various sorority girls on social media from the college that we would soon call our own. Through Instagram we decided which one was our favorite and recruitment was something that we discussed almost constantly, and when we weren’t talking about it, we were talking about how excited we were to live together with our matching Lilly Pulitzer comforters and monograms above our beds.

Finally, it came time to move into our small dorm room together, and during our first weekend at college we spent longer than necessary getting ready for our first party where we met girls from all of the different sororities on our campus and plenty of guys that offered their extremely biased opinions on each of those sororities. After meeting a lot of the girls, we knew what we wanted, and it happened to be the same exact thing.

After being together for every little thing from eating to working out to doing homework in the first few weeks, my roommate and I shared clothes and accessories as we got ready for each night of recruitment. Together we promised that we were going to “go in with an open mind,” even though we both had a premature assumption of what group of girls we would run home to a few days later. And finally it happened: we received a bid card from the same chapter, from the same group that we had already felt we belonged with.

While we were extremely excited to be a part of the same sorority, living with somebody and sharing almost every aspect of the rest of your life with her can be challenging. The only time we were ever apart was when we were in class or when I left for practice, and even then we were usually texting each other non-stop. It was mostly a wonderful experience for my roommate to become my sorority sister, especially because she became like a real sister to me. We borrowed each other’s clothes, we did laundry together, and we talked about various things each night before we went to bed. But with that, I got annoyed with her leaving her dirty underwear on the floor and she got annoyed with me when I would do things like leave a cup of Ramen on my desk and then go away for the weekend.

When my roommate became my sorority sister, we had disagreements. We had passive aggressive moments in which we went a few days without talking much and we had different friend groups. She locked me out once and has had my favorite pair of spandex for several months (hint, hint, Kelsey), and I left my dirty dishes by the sink for nearly a week and hogged the mirror every single day when we were getting ready, and somehow we didn’t kill each other. Being in the same sorority meant that we had to go through the normal challenges of living with somebody, but still go to mixers and brunches and on campus events together. I’m not going to lie, it was hard sometimes, but when my roommate became my sorority sister, I gained a sister for life and I wouldn’t change a thing about our time living together.