                                     [Taylor being very unaffiliated with the proper dose of sass and swag]
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It can be hard  to tell people you are happily unaffiliated at Harvard. If you say you punched final clubs and didn’t get in, you sound sour. If you say you thought about rushing but chose not to, you sound shy, or stuck up. And sure, at some point in my time here, I’ve been all of those things. But as time passed, I settled into my life as unaffiliated, and realized that purely by chance, I’ve found the perfect place for me at Harvard.
Most (nearly all) of my friends have some sort of affiliation, but this came about slowly – perhaps why I feel comfortable in my situation is because I didn’t wake up overnight as the only independent in a clan of devoted Thetas, DGers, and Bees — I got there piece by piece, instead. My freshmen year, two of my blockmates-to-be rushed and joined sororities. I considered it, but changed my mind at the last minute. At the time, I didn’t really understand what the sororities were. I had never felt or seen their presence on campus before — no large houses or tribes of perfectly groomed blonds tanning in the yard between classes, which is what I imagined sorority-presence to be (cough cough Legally Blond) — and in the world around me, few people were in them. So that passed without event, and I never felt that in skipping rush — then or during my sophomore year — I had missed out on something crucial to my social development here at school. It wasn’t until later, on the long, lonely Thursday nights that defined my sophomore slump, that I realized I had missed out on an opportunity to go to mixers and have fun, or at least to leave the room and say I was doing something social, instead of eating Pop-tarts on my bed alone.
Punch was a little different, in that being cut from the few awkward rounds I attended was not something I chose, or wanted, to happen. Unlike sororities on campus, which I hadn’t really known about, Final Clubs were super prevalent, in a mysterious, let-me-know-more way. So when my punch career ended after two weeks and my friends’ carried on into the late fall, I was v sad. Retrospectively, I think I can confidently say (not jaded, I swear!) that my absolute misery after being rejected from female final clubs was less because of them —  I hadn’t met anyone I was crushed not to know better, I wasn’t even sure I could pay for it, and no one was mean to me or anything like that — and more because all of a sudden, I was completely cut off from my friend’s world. As they continued to punch, all of their time — weekends, lunches, then weeknights, even breakfast times — was devoted to punch. And when we were all together and they weren’t on punch dates, they were talking about them. It was lonely, because in a blink, my friends were never around. And it was isolating, because when they were, they cluelessly worked to compound my misery. I started to think of Blank Space as a song about when your friends are punching and you aren’t.
Of course, as the melodramatic and somewhat emotionally weak person I am, I looked internally for all of the reasons for my misery. I had bad acne, and I was cut because I probably nervously picked my pimples at the meet and greet. I was a loser, and somehow they saw through my confident, college self into the awkward chicken I was in high school. I had no style. I had no chill. And I had no affiliation, which was of course suddenly synonymous with no friends.
That’s so miserable to read that it’s awkward, right? But that’s what I felt. It was the worst — the deepest, most self-pitying sophomore slump perhaps in all of history. But it seems, looking back, that as quickly as I fell, I rose. Punch dwindled out to just being in a club, and all of my friends were suddenly swarming me with extra zeal, sensing that something was off.
It was like a miracle: they were in clubs, and sororities, but they still loved me. Wild. And sure they all had parties to go to that I “couldn’t” attend, but over time that “couldn’t” kind of crumbled as well. I was always their plus one, or their uninvited but hardly noticed tag-along. It was, and is, wonderful. My un-affiliation has morphed from a Blank Space to a blank slate for all of their events that are only as cool as the people who go – so of course they need me, because I am very cool **hair toss**. I also realized that clubs and sororities aren’t a make or break thing, even for the people in them. Just because you’re in the same group as someone, doesn’t mean you’re best friends. In fact, it doesn’t even mean you get along. What these groups are, from my perspective on the outside, are fantastic chunks of people who hangout together, meet each other, and throw parties for the rest of us. They’re a great way to meet new people, but they can also be time-consuming, expensive, and disappointing. In the end, being affiliated, or not affiliated, is what you make of it.
Sure I still get bored on Thursday nights, when everyone is at club dinner or Greek yada-yada. But now that’s the night I use to pumice my feet and watch bad Netflix – something I can only do in the peace and quiet of being alone. And comments that used to be frustrating – “So, you’re not affiliated? Oh, then you don’t know people”; “Why don’t you just join a group that mixes?” – now make me want to let loose a fart near the asker and walk away.
My life as an unaffiliated is perfect. I have smooth feet, full weekends, and the great friends I started with. I would even venture to say that I’m not just unaffiliated: I’m a God Damn Independent.