Bid Day, 2017

I'm sitting in the auditorium desperately waiting to see what letters I would read on the bid card I was handed, my fate and home for the next four years sitting in one sealed envelope. Two ridiculously and emotionally tolling weekends of formal recruitment were finally over. I had always wanted to join a sorority. All my former cheer teammates posted their photos on social media, sharing where they ended up for their college years, and I too did the same thing. And for the first two years, I loved it. It was everything I dreamed of and more. My big lived in the chapter house my freshman year, so I was in her room almost every day since bid day and would walk in unannounced when I wanted to get out of my dorm to hang out with her and her roommate. I met her on sisterhood night and ran home to her on bid day, big/little reveal, initiation, and soon, her wedding. I was, and still am, so grateful that I met her through AOII. Through it all, I made so many new friends who went to homecoming pep rallies, football games, karaoke, and 80s nights with me for two years.

For the first year, I was blindly in love with my sorority

I stood up for it against all the backlash Greek life got, I talked non-stop about my life living in the house, and always shared the Timehop memories when it was the one and two year anniversary of my joining the chapter on bid day, my big/little reveal and initiation. My life literally revolved around AOII. I was in the chapter, I lived in the house, and most of my friends were my sisters, so I spent most of my time with them and hung out there even before I lived in house. It really shaped the beginning of my college experience. If I heard about others' negative experiences, I'd wave them off as just pessimistic, as if they didn't understand the meaning of our values. It's hard to see the flaws in the system when you're a freshman, as you can come and go to the house as you please. Even as a sophomore, I was too excited about the experience of living in a sorority house to pay attention to the problems that began to arise as the year went on.

But when I had my most difficult semester academically during spring 2019, the issues that arose began to affect me directly. I started having huge issues keeping up with the demands of frequent meetings, formal recruitment, recruitment practices, mandatory and social events on top of my 19 credit hours, two leadership positions, and four other student orgs. Yet, people had an increasingly difficult time understanding my situation. No one understood where I was coming from or tried to work with me when I missed out on a lot. Like, meet me halfway here, guys.

I couldn't balance everything at once, yet it felt like everyone expected me to

I tried to do that only to end up as an emotional and physical wreck in May. Only one person who was with me then who saw how much I struggled juggling it all and that person wasn't even in my sorority. My sisters would say that they forgot that I lived in the house since I rarely even came home from the library most nights. I heard rumors about me not being dedicated to the chapter, about my relationship with my little, and my involvement in AOII. Yet, the only people who checked in on me were my roommate and the sisterhood chair. So, I put on a mask at chapter brunch to smile and laugh, talking to my very few friends as if everything was great. I just drifted away from the chapter by the end of the year, and there was no going back, no matter how hard I tried. Some of my sisters told my little to drop me and let them adopt her while I was drowning in my classes, struggling with my mental health, and wasn't around often. I started feeling the loneliness during spring 2019 as well. The friends I had all either graduated or dropped. I tried to talk to the people I sat with at meals, but I was talked over or my presence was just ignored most of the time when I made an effort to socialize with them. This continued for fall 2019 as well, which is when I officially knew I was done.

What I saw is that it was all about the parties being thrown on weekends, the date parties, socials, and frats we got paired with for homecoming and Greek week or what parties to go to on "blackout" or "Srat" Monday. FYI- make sure you don't use those two infamous hashtags on social media or else you'll get in trouble. You can still get plastered though! Sisterhood is still our main purpose, right? This is how we apparently live out our ritual.

The point of sisterhood is to be there for each other and build each other up at our lowest points. Heck, that's the point of friendships and relationships too. We're supposed to have positivity and make this house a judgment-free zone. My trust in a chapter I loved dearly became an unsafe, stressful place that I was forced to live in or face probation instead. I started disliking it there in September, but I had to suffer through it for the next 3 months until I could have my own apartment. All the screaming and running down the halls that woke me up at 2 a.m. on exam days kept me up on more than one occasion. It gave me such bad anxiety on top of all the garbage I dealt with during the semester. I would grab a box of my food to bring it to the library while doing homework or bring my plate to my room and eat there because I couldn't handle living there with people who dislike me for reasons I don't know. I gave them my respect and kindness, even if we didn't get along. What I got out of my time there is the feeling that it's just one big, ridiculously expensive popularity contest that makes your college life revolve around the privilege of wearing three letters across your chest, your backpack, your laptop stickers, your hats, and Instagram bio. It's sad, honestly. This isn't the genuine chapter I joined two years ago in my first month of college. I made so many sacrifices I didn't want to for the sake of sisterhood: skipping church four Sundays in a row for mandatory events with hefty fines for unexcused absences, lost valuable study time for upcoming exams in classes I struggled in since studying for an exam isn't considered a legitimate excuse, yet academics come first, and more.

Another reason contributing to my dropping is when I was a recruiter in fall 2018, another recruiter told me to take my cross offbecause we're not allowed to talk about religion with potential new members since it was visible through the mesh neck of my dress. That is unacceptable. I do not put up with people going after my faith, ever. It didn't end there, though. I also realized this fall that formal recruitment, in reality, is mainly about who can reel in the biggest new member class on bid day. There's always a huge talk surrounding numbers and I couldn't stand it. These women are people, not a statistic. Yet, nobody is going to be pleased when only 20 new members came back to us while other chapters have up to 50 new members at their door. The mood would be 10 times better if that was us, though. Quantity over quality, as the saying goes. It's also an awful mentality to have if you want to have a cohesive chapter with good retention rates. The time commitment for recruitment itself and preparation for it, homecoming and Greek week while needing to be in at least 1 other student org according to Sorority and Fraternity Life rules, is insane. I needed to have a life outside of my sorority. The 2-year housing requirement is almost impossible to fulfill for the insane cost of living in a house of 40 sophomores and juniors with ridiculously thin walls and people who do not all get along. I heard my sisters talking about me loud and clear through my own bedroom wall, which was awful. I never had any time to myself, since I also had a roommate (though I love her, she's great) If my roommate and I wanted to have a private conversation, we had to whisper to each other in our own room to not be overheard.

A month into my 2nd year living in the house, I decided to drop

I don't understand why, when I came back in August for my 2nd year of living in the house, my personal relationship with someone else became the subject of gossip in a living room full of girls. Lies were spread, awful things were said about me by people I barely know, and my roommate had to stand up for me, to tell the truth. When I was put on probation in August for "unsisterly conduct" and "bullying others" into proctoring me for study hours which I have no recollection of, I was soupset. I wasn't given a chance to defend myself, because the disciplinary action had already been made for me without hearing my side of the story. All of this was completely new to me. When I decided at the end of September that I was going to drop, I signed a confidentiality agreement when I presented my decision. It was a secret I only told 3 close friends in the chapter and the standards committee. I trusted my sisters that it would stay that way until we had to vote on it in our last chapter of the semester. I still had to live there for the next 3 months, so I didn't want to get hell for my own personal decision from the people I lived with. Funny thing is that the information I tried ridiculously hard to keep to myself got out to the rest of the house. So, I don't know who broke my trust, but that is so not okay. I hated that a difficult choice I made for private reasons was nonchalantly discussed as "Oh, did you hear Anna is dropping?" as if it was anyone's business but my own.

As if my life wasn't interesting enough to discuss, the pool of gossip victims expanded! I would walk into the kitchen to grab some food to hear an entire table of girls discussing what they didn't like about one of the sweetest people I know, just because they didn't like her lifestyle or how different it is from the way the rest of us live. I was baffled by all of it. When I went through the worst four months of my life during this past semester, my sisters told me they were here if I needed anything, only after I said I was dropping, of course. I was also asked to wait until the end of the school year to leave, for the sake of finishing my two-year living requirement in the house. After hearing this, I was instantly taken back to memories of when they were nowhere to be found during all the times that I sat on the floor of my room in tears for an hour and a half with my best friend who is all the way in Kansas, on the phone a couple of weeks ago. I'm sure the entire upstairs floor heard my hysterical tears that night because they asked my roommate the next day what happened, who wasn't home then, and didn't even know about it. Nobody was there for me when the only thing I wanted to be someone to hug me and tell me things will be okay. I got silence in return from everyone except for her. Why would I want to stay? That was the last straw. There was no way I could make it to May.

All of this made it such a negative atmosphere filled with bitterness that dragged me down every day. I didn't get to escape for a weekend when the home is eight hours away, my parents couldn't take off work to come to see me and I didn't have a boyfriend's place to go to and cry to anymore, as I got dumped three days later. I didn't have anyone there to comfort me in person the last weekend of September when I hysterically cried to my big on the phone in the cold on some bench on Court Street in the middle of the night, as I told her I couldn't do it any longer. All alone, once again, when the one person who had gone through the same situation and understood me was halfway across the country (God bless her, honestly.) So, I had no choice but to go home to that place every.single.sleepless.night. for the worst four months of my life, which is what killed me.

I did my best to spend as little time there as possible,

I used to hole myself up in my favorite booth on the library's 4th floor where all my friends knew to find me. I spent entire days at my friend's apartment to just hang out and do homework to not feel like the walls of the room was caving in on me and I could actually breathe. My self-esteem and mental health were a total disaster: I was soself-conscious for almost the entirety of 2019 over simple activities and people didn't understand why, I couldn't sleep, I barely ate, my hair fell out dramatically, I cried every day and I faced a nightmare period of my life all alone. The rude attitudes, the toxicity, and drama in the house led to multiple respect talks for the chapter to sit through. It's just a flawed system of women in their late teens and early 20s telling each other what to do, handing out disciplinary actions to their peers, and telling recruiters what kind of topics to discuss in recruitment. For example: asking a girl where she got her dress from to gage her financial stability. We love teenage bureaucracies! I mentally and emotionally couldn't handle another day there, so I asked my Russian club friends to help me move into my new apartment a couple of days early before my dad could come to Ohio with the rest of my stuff. That's how desperate I was to leave. I couldn't push through the next year and a half for the sake of wearing three letters across my chest and on my stole at graduation so I can say that I was a part of a sorority that caused me a whole lot of grief in college.

I need to move on with my life, and can't do it wearing those 3 letters

As much as I used to love sorority life and am grateful for the people like my big, my now former roommate, my fam, and a handful of others it gave me, it just wasn't worth wrecking my life in college to make it through graduation. I loved it for what it gave me and I can appreciate the good that came out of it, but I have to be reasonable. I put my money, time, and dedication into things that help me grow, not things that make me miserable. I would much rather live in my apartment with three other people than in the house I was scrutinized and torn apart in to feel so insecure about myself for two semesters. I'm just not AOII or die like I used to be. Believe me when I say I tried to stay. I literally made a private story on Instagram with the caption, "Someone please give me a reason to stay in my sorority because I'm running out of reasons and I don't think I can do this anymore." I didn't get a single reply, because there were none. So, with all due respect, goodbye AOII. It's not worth it anymore and I don't regret a decision I should've made when spring semester 2019 ended. Everything has its time, and mine just had to end earlier than expected.

Here's to a whole new life in college that has just begun.