There comes a time in every sorority girl's college career that challenges her to her very core. This particular task requires her to sacrifice her time, efforts, and mental state in order to create the perfect product. It takes skill, determination, and a little bit of jealous rage to complete, but when it's done, you know it will be the envy of everyone who views it. Ladies, we are talking about the painstaking process of cooler painting.

I'm not quite sure where this crazy idea even came from, but for those of you who have no idea why I would even "paint" a cooler and give it to a frat guy, I'll elaborate. As tradition goes, if a guy in a fraternity asks a girl, it is expected of her to paint him a cooler. By paint, I mean sand the cooler down and paint each side with fun designs that relate to the guy's fraternity and interests. On the other hand, sorority girls also paint coolers for themselves or their sisters as bib/little or 21st birthday gifts. Here are some good examples of some bomb painted coolers so you can visualize the story I will tell you shortly:

Now that you're brushed up (ha, see what I did there) on the history and meaning behind this tradition, let me tell you about my experience with painting my boyfriend's cooler last spring.

Prologue

It all started with an innocent question to a conversation I did not understand at the time. My boyfriend was talking to one of his fraternity brother about formal and whether either of them had a cooler painted for them before. I was not a part of Greek life at the time so I asked what they meant. My boyfriend gave me the whole story and how it's tradition for the girl who is asked to a fraternity formal paints him a cooler. I immediately took on the challenge and began my research.

Part One: The Naive Beginning

Level of frustration: Very low

I did not have anything big planned for spring break, so I stayed home and spent some much needed time with my family. I decided that this would be the perfect time to paint his cooler. Like any girl would do, I immediately fled to Pinterest to look up all I need to know about painting a cooler. I needed to know what supplies to get, what to paint on it, what the easiest way to make specific designs look like a pro did it and not an amateur. I found a blog post that helped me get my bearings and embarked on my journey to Wal-Mart to get my supplies.

Once I was there, I found myself overwhelmed with all of the supplies I needed to just begin the project. I needed to find the perfect paint colors and paint pens. I needed a cooler, most importantly, and deciding that was the biggest struggle. Once I left, I felt excited and terrified to begin. I got home, figured out my design, and got to work.

Part Two: Let's Get Down to Business

Level of frustration: Low

The tutorial I was following had a lot of steps to the process. The first part was to sand down the entire cooler and then apply a base coat. Beginning this step was not the hardest part because I knew how to sand, but the next step had me terrified; painting the base coat of color. I was so scared that I was going to pick the worst colors and he would hate it and it would look so dumb. I spent a good twenty minutes just deciding on the colors I wanted to use on the backgrounds. Eventually, I picked my colors and painted them in two layers then let the cooler dry. I was still feeling pretty good about this project and it was not taking too much of my time, so I was kind of excited for the next part.

Part Three: A Perfectionist's Worst Nightmare

Level of frustration: Medium-high

The next part was probably the most nerve-racking part of the progress; the detailed painting. For this step, I would print out the design I wanted to use (his fraternity's letters or crest, a brand logo, or any other type of art) and I trace it with pencil onto tissue paper. Then I would take the tissue paper and tape it tightly to the side of the cooler that I wanted the design to be on. After that, I would use a sharpie to trace the design on the tissue paper so it would bleed onto the cooler and provide a nice template for me to trace over with my paint brush and paint pens.

At first, I was good with this process. Sure, it was very time-consuming and it would get frustrating when the paper would tear if I bared down too hard. The problem arose when I went to trace my boyfriend's crest onto the side of the cooler. My boyfriend is a brother of Delta Tau Delta and their crest is very complex and filled with tiny details that made me want to scream.

I began with the idea that tracing the crest would be just as simple as tracing the big greek letters and other bigger designs I had traced earlier. I was so wrong. I realized way too late that my sharpie's point was much too big for the intricate details of the crest. After about an hour of trying to get it just right, I ended up messing up one of the items in the crest and had to decide if I wanted to start the crest over completely or try to fix it. I decided to try and fix it with my paint pens first. I started by outlining it thicker with the black paint pen, but that took away from the colored portion. So I decided to work on adding more color, but then it looked too lopsided. After another thirty minutes of repeating these steps I gave up and thought that it really did not matter anyway.

Part Four: The Moment of Pure Doubt

Level of frustration: Very high

I was so close to the end. I had completed all but the front side of the cooler. It took me a total of five days to finish the three sides and the top (including the corners) and I was so done with the whole thing. I would think to myself "What a stupid tradition. This is so much work for something that is just going to get messed up" At this point, I was losing sleep over a cooler. My back ached and my joints were sore from the constant hunching over to paint and draw.

But this was it. This was the last side. And I knew I could have been done that night, other than sealing it, but there was one catch. I had no clue what to paint on it. I had used up all of my other ideas on the other sides of the cooler and I was fresh out of clever (but not totally cliche) ideas. I spent a few hours painting something, then starting over. I repeated this cycle over and over until I finally threw my paint pen down in frustration and enlisted the help of my poor mother.

We both sat in the kitchen where I was working on the cooler and brainstormed ideas. I knew for a fact that I wanted to include the Southern Proper logo since the last idea involved it. I had already painted it onto the cooler and was super proud of the decent job I did at painting it that I was not going to waste my effort. We kept listing off clever ways to incorporate the words southern, proper, and frat. We started with different variations of "live frat, be proper, stay southern" and would go down a list of verbs that sounded the best with them. Finally after an hour or so, we decided on the perfect mantra for the front of his cooler. I painted them on and I was so excited to finally be done. I sealed it several times over with sealant and declared my week-long project complete.

Part Five: The Moment That Made It Worth My Suffering

Level of frustration: Non-existant

The night I was going to give my boyfriend the cooler I had spent so much time on, I was super anxious. All I wanted was for him to like it. I was so worried that he was not going to love it and my efforts wasted. He walked in the door to my house and I went and got it, picking it up gingerly from the floor of the closet. I told him to close his eyes and set it down in front of him.

He was so incredibly astonished at his cooler. He immediately thanked me and gave me a huge hug and kiss. He was so proud of me and he wanted to show everyone what a great job I did.

And it was in that moment that I realized that it was all worth it; the tearing tissue paper, the intricate details, the frustration of putting the right quotes in the right places, the personalization; it was all for him. I still feel a sense of pride whenever he lugs it from his trunk to a tailgate or house party. Because I made that for him and it has a little bit of me in it. It was worth every frustration to make him happy.