Editor’s Note: Paige and Sabiha decided to go through Panhellenic recruitment this Fall at DePaul despite their initial aversion to it. Below is their experience recounted by each of them. All opinions are their own!
Paige
Everyone has a preconceived notion of what a sorority is. For most of my life, I thought it was the greatest thing ever. My mom is still best friends with the girls from her sorority and actually lives next-door to her Big, who is like a second mother to me. Growing up as a little girl, I dreamed of being able to have that special relationship my mom had with her girlfriends. Then I joined NCL in 7th grade and kinda fell out of love with the whole sorority idea. I went through high school with pretty much the same attitude, and went to college with the same attitude as well.
But I knew how much sorority meant to my mom, so I promised her I’d go through rush. I went to the sorority fair with the motto “for Mom” playing through my head nonstop. There was a room full of girls and I instantly became overwhelmed and all I wanted to do was go home and watch Once Upon A Time. But I pushed through and continued on through the night. If I’m being honest, the entire night is a blur and I don’t remember much of it. But I walked home with my roommates remembering a few of the girls I briefly talked to and had good conversations with.
A few days later, I was on my way to our very first round. I showed up late, I was dressed way more casually than everyone around me, and I stood by myself for the first meeting of our Rho Gamma groups. I felt out of place and extremely uncomfortable. Then one of my Rho Gammas, Marissa, made a joke about me standing alone and offered me a seat with a trio of girls. I felt like that shy kid at school who doesn’t know how to speak and the teacher has to do all the talking for them as I pulled up a chair and sat down with three strangers. But they engaged me in conversation, and throughout the week I’d stand next to two of them a few times and always have someone to talk to. (Thank you Marissa for nudging me out of my comfort zone!)
As the days went by, I became more and more comfortable with myself. I started to see what each sorority represented and, surprisingly, I found myself wanting to talk to some of the girls again and again even though at the end of philanthropy night I physically choked on my own dry throat. I kid you not, I had to stop talking to some girl and focus on swallowing because it suddenly had become impossible. As embarrassing as that was though, I laughed it off and continued to get to know all the girls I was meeting.
After each day of rounds, we had to rank the sororities to our liking. Everyone (myself included) always wonders how one can do such a thing after only talking to one or two people from the entire sorority for a half an hour. How can you judge a sorority based on a few conversations? The answer is you can’t. It’s literally all about that famous gut-feeling You might be saying, “Okay Paige, cut the bull puckey”, but I’m being serious. I was as skeptical as you are as you read this, but I swear to you, it’s an actual thing. There isn’t a burning or a glowing or a warm fuzzy feeling, it’s simply that in some rounds you feel a connection and have good conversation and in others you realize that the girls are great and so is the sorority, but something is missing.
You should never regret a decision you make in your rankings. Sit there for a few minutes and see how the ranking you wrote down feel. The most important advice I could give is, even if you go into it dreading it or doing it simply because you feel pressured to do so, as long as you have an open mind you will find your home. And I found mine, as did my friend Sabiha.
Sabiha
Paige and I had both met the day of sorority fair at a Her Campus meeting and briefly talked about this uncertain rush. Yet here we are two weeks later as new members of Alpha Omricron Pi and we could not be happier. Though we had met for a short while we did not spend much time together during rush, however when we both ran to the same “home” on bid day it almost seemed like it was meant to be.
Although Paige had grown up in a household where a sorority was a big part of her life, for me it was the complete opposite. I come from a household where very few of my family members are involved in Greek life. For this reason I never knew what to expect, all I knew about sororities was the cliche things associated in movies. However I had promised myself to step out of my comfort zone in college and after seeing all my friends go through rush at their respective schools it almost seemed like I had to. Even though I was not completely sold on the idea I had to give it a chance. I went into rush week feeling like it wasn’t for me but everytime I conversed with these girls it didn’t seem forced but rather like I had known them for years. Rush was an experience like no other and for once peer pressure did me justice.
So for anyone who is debating rushing for whatever reason just know that more often than not the girls in sororities will be the first to tell you how they had a negative connotation of rushing as well. Some may call it “buying friends” but take it from us it’s really choosing a family. Your sisters will continue to support you long after your college days and this is very evident within the short amount of time both Paige and I have spent with these girls. This is our home and it was meant to be which is why we both went through this so called uncertain rush.