If you had asked me around this time last year whether or not I was planning on moving into my dorm a week early in order to join the thousands of girls registered for fall sorority recruitment, I would’ve probably laughed in your face. Sure, I’d seen Bama Rush-Tok dominate my feed year after year, but I never considered myself to be someone who would actually do that. Before my freshman year of college, the entirety of my sorority expertise consisted of Legally Blonde and Scream Queens, which are both—spoiler alert—wildly inaccurate.
So, imagine my surprise when I received a text from one of my childhood best friends telling me that she had signed up and she didn’t want to do it by herself. Somehow I found myself registering too.
After summer orientation, the process started, which consisted of conducting a psychotic amount of research about everything sorority-based I could find. Somehow, I thought that I needed to know absolutely everything in order to make up for the parts of me that weren’t “sorority” enough. I needed to know exactly what to wear, I needed to know how to talk or what hair colors which chapters liked best, I needed to know everything about everything. I thought that I would need eight different dresses and five pairs of shoes for three rounds, which, looking back, was absolutely ridiculous. I thought that if I made up for the parts of me that weren’t “sorority” enough, I would still be “sorority” enough.
Past Emmy, you were kind of dumb for that. The end.
The truth is (and you’re not going to believe this but take it from me) none of that matters at all. You don’t get a special award for buying the most clothes or having the best hair, and you don’t get a bid just because you watched the most Bama Rush TikToks. There’s a mantra talked about during orientation that says that you’ll end up where you belong and to trust the process, but I never believed it until I realized firsthand how true it was.
Sisterhood finds you. Sisterhood finds you in authenticity, in being your real true self and in celebrating your differences. It may look intimidating, but the girls behind the doors in each chapter are just that: other girls (who, by the way, are probably just as nervous as you are). They all want the best for you, and they want you to thrive and find your place just as much as you do. Just because you might not end up in a specific sorority doesn’t mean you can’t keep the friends you make through recruitment either.
Each and every sorority is different, but there are none that are better or worse than the other. Each chapter has a thriving sisterhood that would be lucky to have you, so wherever you end up, it’s a win-win either way. The most important thing is to be you.
I didn’t know it at the time, but when I was going through a round of recruitment at the chapter I would eventually become a member of, someone said something to me that stuck out the most. She told me that getting to Bid Day isn’t the end—it’s only the beginning. When the decorations come down and the party ends, what matters isn’t that you’re in the most popular sorority or whatever else the Internet thinks is cool. What matters is that you’re where you belong, and that’s what’s most important.
Not dresses, not hair. Just you—the most important thing.
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