A week of getting up early, doing your hair and makeup just to sweat it off within two hours, and having 120 girls screaming a song that you can hardly understand at you, what could be better? Personally, I could have thought of a million reasons why this sounded horrible. Being in a sorority was the last thing that I wanted to do as a freshman but I decided to go through recruitment anyways just because my sister was in a sorority and said it was “so fun,” and I couldn’t be more glad that I did it.
All of the girls that sat on lawns with me, waiting for the doors of each house to open and welcome us into the glorious air conditioning, were all obviously just as nervous as me. It felt like we were all in the same boat. There was no way that any other freshman had gone through this experience before which made us all equal. No one was better than another, and when going to a big school like the University of Georgia, once classes start, you are instantly comparing yourself to everyone around you whether you know it or not.
Throughout high school I would typically keep to myself. I would go to school, talk to my select group of friends, and then leave a little too quickly out of the parking lot each day. For someone who never really knew how to talk to strangers, mostly because I didn’t ever want to, I was thrown into the deep end. Terrifyingly enough, there was no deep end. The girls that you talk to know what they are doing already whether you realize it or not. Their jobs are to hold conversations with you and you begin to learn how to talk to strangers.
The first round of recruitment is all butterflies and patterned dresses and hoping that you don’t sweat too much. By the second and third rounds you realize that this is not as bad as some people say. Everyone is going to be sweating and dying in the Georgia heat. Everyone is nervous on the first day, and will begin to realize what to do on the second day. Everyone is trying to get to know people.
It was not just in the sorority houses that you would talk to strangers. I made some great friends by just sitting by people on lawns or waiting in lines. It begins to give you a sense of confidence that you can talk to anybody whether you know them or not. It gives you confidence to the point that on the first day of classes, when you walk into your first ever 300 person class, you aren’t afraid to ask the stranger next to you their name and if they know anything about the class and if they might want to study with you sometime.
I went through recruitment with no intention of ever joining a sorority. You don’t have to intend to ever join a sorority to go through it. It became more of a personal endeavor by the end of the week than an actual goal to receive a bid from any of the houses. I wanted to prove to myself that I could talk to anyone, that I could start off college knowing people where I thought I would know no one. I wanted to gain some kind of confidence to start off my four years at the University of Georgia. Somehow recruitment gave me that courage and if anyone were to ask me if I would go back and do it all over again, I would say yes in a heartbeat. To anyone that is on the fence about going through it, I would definitely recommend it.