“Trust the process,” they say. “It’s an amazing experience,” they say. Though I will agree that formal sorority recruitment is certainly an experience, I’m here to tell you that it’s not all rainbows and unicorns like you might think.
Have you ever been interviewed by 30 different women about every aspect of your personality? Well, I have. Over the course of two weekends, I attended 16 houses (some more than once) and talked to anywhere from one to four different girls at each party. I attempted to tell them the most interesting and worthwhile parts of my personality while holding cups of water, Shirley Temples and lemonade and trying to get a drink in between bursts of talking. I had stories about my life locked and loaded for every instance. I had my resume embedded in my memory so that I could reference any of my activities here at OSU at a moment’s notice. I held eye contact, remembered to smile and sat down like the perfect lady that I am (or at least attempted to do so). I did all of this and more all with the secret fear in the back of my head that the conversation would reach a halt and an uncomfortable silence would fall over us. With this process, you never know what kind of girl you’re going to be paired with; you never know if you’ll have anything in common or if you’ll even like her. With this possible obstacle, you have to remember that they want girls who can hold a conversation.
Going into this process, I knew I would have an instant connection with some girls and talk to other girls where there really wasn’t anything there. I anticipated this, which is why when it came to selections I put down sororities where there was a lack of a connection or I didn’t get a good vibe or something just didn’t feel right. However, what they don’t tell you is that it really doesn’t matter what you want. Yes, they factor in your preferences, to an extent. What is often forgotten is this is a mutual process, and by mutual, I mean that the opinion of the sorority matters more. After the first round of selections, certain houses dropped from my schedule which was expected because the connections with the girls in those houses were not as strong as some of the others. What was unexpected was the appearance of a house that I had ranked last on my preferences. Apparently, this happened to several girls, where the many of the lowest ranked houses would appear on their schedule the next day even though they did not have any interest in being a part of those sororities.
In the progressing rounds, it became abundantly clear that houses you like and seemed to mesh with will still drop you, and houses that do not seem at all related to you or how you see yourself, will continue to invite you back to learn more about you. For many girls, seeing their preferred houses drop them resulted in many questions and doubts. “What did I do wrong?” “Do they not see me as I see me?” “Did I scare them away when I spilled my water on my lap and dropped my donut on the floor?” (Yes, I did this). No matter how many questions you ask yourself, you’ll never know the answers to them. The reality of it all is that no matter how many times you go to a house, the whole conversation still remains largely superficial. No one can know the real you by talking to you for 30 minutes, 45 minutes or even an hour. The only thing you can do is “trust the process,” and hope for the best. After the exhausting long days and emotional turmoil, most girls will end up with a bid to the house they were meant to be in; some girls will not. There are no guarantees with this process. It is entirely possible that you make it to the very end and don’t have a sorority to run to on bid day. It is also entirely possible to get a home away from home with the sisters you never knew you wanted. So, yes, there is a definite risk of going Greek; a risk of coming out with nothing, a risk of disappointment, but as my mom says, “Everything that is supposed to work out, will work out.”