While most schools have been done with formal recruitment since before the fall semester even started, here at the University of Mississippi we have only recently finished up the long week of wooing, clapping, singing, and awkward conversations about our major we call “rush.”
While I think I can say that the vast majority of girls who “ran down the hill” this year were ecstatic to join their new houses, I could not help but notice the few who were walking instead of running into the arms of their new Greek family. Lately, they have been on my mind.
I am ashamed to say that one year ago, I was that girl. I was the girl who opened her Bid Day card and started crying tears of sadness instead of joy. I slumped my way down the hill in disappointment, and I sulked in my Bid Day jersey instead of taking pictures with the giant letters in front of my new house.
Looking back on that moment, I genuinely want to punch myself in the face. I wonder now how I could have been so rude and ungrateful.
While I chose not to realize it then, I had just been accepted into a family of women who love and care for each other, and who were kind enough to handpick me for their sisterhood because they saw that for me, too.
The same girls who I turned my nose up at during recruitment week would end up being the ones to support me through all the ups and downs of freshman year. They would be the ones who would help me pass my math class when my teacher barely spoke English. They would be the ones to rescue me with sober rides, game day dresses when I spilled on mine, emergency dates to formals, heartfelt conversations, and kindness even when I did not deserve it.
The reality is that the house I thought was my "first choice" did not see that for me the way my current sisters do. I do not know why, nor do I care at this point. A group of loyal, amazing women chose me to become one of them, and that is enough for me.
So to all the girls who are wondering whether or not to drop the house they think they do not want, I say this: Get over yourself and give it a chance.
That sounds harsh, but you will get from your sisterhood what you put into it. Go to dinner at your house and sit with someone new. Go to all the new member meetings and participate in the goofy fundraisers. Give them your all and your full attention, and along the way you just might find the “connection” that was missing during recruitment has been there all along. Before you know it, the miserable three-hour dance practice in the rain for that fraternity fundraiser will be the day you meet your new best friends. Soon enough you’ll be bonding over making fun of that accounting professor everyone hates, or laughing at lunch about the drunken dance moves that got one of your sisters kicked out of your last swap.
Until then, take a deep breath and keep your head up. One day soon, you will look back the same way I do, and wonder why you ever cried on Bid Day.
