The month before fall semester of freshman year is a month spent reinventing yourself. A new social hierarchy is constructed and you have the chance to climb to the top. The gym is completely packed and everyone’s wardrobe undergoes a drastic makeover. Come August and everyone’s Sharpay Evans moment arrives. It’s the time to strut your stuff.
You now enter the second phase of freshman travails: flirting. Each person initiates this phase with the monotonous, “where are you from, what’s your major” and progresses to same-sex flirting, giggling, carefully crafted jokes and mutual dislike for the most obvious things. Then come the references to mutual friends, thereby validating your evident popularity in high school. Soon you’re the King or Queen of your freshman dorm, invited to all of the parties. Hawaiian shirts, mini tutus, crop tops, ugly Christmas sweaters, retro dresses and bikinis, you’ve exhausted all your attire for every possible themed party. You’re “so college,” you love all the “baes” you’ve met and cannot wait to be back with “the squad” after winter break. The hardest part of freshman year was O-week and that’s over, right?
Nah. Spring semester is an escalated O-week, which ends with exhausted freshmen and cranky upperclassmen. It’s back to picking out outfits for every possible day, getting the curling iron ready and most importantly, mastering small talk. Your muscles might be tired from that omnipresent smile, but definitely try being your charming best. You may have only ten minutes to make a sister fall in love with you but that’s the whole challenge! Treat it like a game, rush isn’t meant to be a traumatizing life-or-death situation. As you spend hours in the Convention Centre, you begin to notice the randomization and hasty selection that characteristics this process. It’s basically a form of college admissions, except it doesn’t matter! Girls, pause. Take a step back, a deep breathe and acknowledge that you passed the hardest and only round by being accepted into Duke University. In some sense, the girls might have it easier. Boys have to be bulkier than ever before and build an impossible tolerance to every possible substance. Watching them straggle into the freshmen dorm common rooms at two in the morning is probably the most entertaining part of rush.
Then comes the best of both worlds: Selective Living Group rush. It has you bouncing around like a bunny, ensuring that you master the worlds of flirting, “bromance,” chugging and humor. School definitely takes a back seat and your social skills should be moved into fourth gear, accelerating you to the top of the hill. Bid Day brings tears, sorority screams, a plethora of Instagram posts, the mandatory “bro hug” and a family for life. It’s a whirlwind of a month but without it we wouldn’t have the open rush parties!