As a freshman, you’re just trying to get by. You’re trying to get used to a whole new lifestyle that leaves very little room for remembering everyone’s name and all of the places you have to be at once. When I joined a sorority at Santa Clara, I was looking for a group of people that I could turn to for a greater sense of community and that would have my back no matter what, literally. I can say for a fact that through my sorority experience I have met some incredible people. It wasn’t until the beginning of this school year, when I spent a ridiculous amount of time with the girls in my sorority that I was finally able to get to know the girls that shared a commonality with me, what we srat girls like to call sisterhood.
This year as I went through rush for the first time on the other side, I began to feel that I actually knew the girls that I had been doing service with, going to weekly events with, and ultimately spending a vast majority of my first year at SCU with. Yeah, sure, I had made some dear friends through my sorority as the year went by and I am grateful for my experience, but nothing compared to the pride I felt as I went through rush and got to know these people on a whole new level than would have been possible if not for the process the year before.
So, rush at Santa Clara is four days long until bids are given out. On these days, members of each sorority dress in similar color schemes, do their hair and makeup, and basically go on mini dates with each new girl that is rushing.
When I say I got to know these girls on “a whole new level,” I don’t think people can truly understand what I mean. I learned people’s deepest darkest secrets, saw some things I didn’t necessarily want to see, and witnessed tears and hysterical laughter….Okay, maybe not that dramatic, but there is one incident that will forever live on in my memory of my first year being on the other side of rush. So here it goes.
Picture this: 7:00 pm, day 2, the last round of rush comes around, everyone is mingling, having a grand ol’ time outside…and then there’s me. Face down on the musky carpet of the historical Alpha Phi sorority house, while the president of the sorority (and the sweetest person I’ve ever met) holds a hot pad on my butt cheek and her officer attempts to pull a large chunk of wood out of me. After about 35 minutes of straight agony and no success, the tweezers are passed down a line of about three or four other people who take over surgery. Still no success.
Meanwhile, the entire sorority is passing through the room and each and every one of them gets the pleasure of getting to know me on a whole other level, a.k.a seeing my entire back side in full view. After Googling “the best ways to remove a splinter” my sisters and I did a handful of experiments, from hydrogen peroxide to baking soda to a sterilized needle, all of which were equally painful and traumatizing.
How did this come to be, you may ask? Well, let me tell you. I was in a hurry to get to the kitchen and grab a much needed snack in between rounds when I bumped into an old wooden chest residing in the dining room. I felt a shooting pain go through my a*s cheek. I looked behind me and sure enough my skirt had been punctured. Little did I know that it would soon launch into an hour-long spectacle.
Immediately after coming into contact with the 75-year-old wooden chest, I thought to myself “oh how bad could it really be, just a little scrape, no biggie!” Fast forward 20 minutes when the stinging sensation would not subside and I started to feel that something had gone terribly wrong. I sprinted to the bathroom, flipped on the switch, pulled up my skirt and sure enough I found a foreign object embedded into my skin. I calmly receded out of the bathroom and relayed the information to some of my closest confidants. Out of the goodness of their hearts and fear for my safety, these friends of mine decided to share the information with a higher source. These great confidants thought it was the funniest thing they have heard in ages and decided to share the information with the large majority of our sisterhood.
Out of sheer concern for my well-being, my dear friend, we will call her Jeanie, offers to help me out. She ordered me to pull up my skirt to let her examine the splinter. After some scary noises, she realized the seriousness of the injury that put me on edge. It was mutually decided that the best position for the most successful surgery would be if I laid down operation style. We tried every trick in the book. Finally, after being pried at and scarred, a solution was determined: the body naturally pushes splinters out, so lets just let it do its thing.
Fast-forward two weeks after this tragedy and the splinter has finally surrendered. On October 10, 2016 at approximately 1:45 p.m. the abnormally large splinter had been removed and the bullet wound had been tended. The physical and, more significantly, emotional trauma of this accident will forever scar me, but it’s all about the mems! AMIRIGHT! So, there you have it – an entirely true, accurate depiction of a journey that will never be forgotten. Rush 2016, you did me well.
Overall, this slight hiccup in the journey of Rush could never undermine the hell of a time and experience that it was. I grew closer to people I never thought I would and made stronger friendships than I could ever imagine. The splinter incident will live on forever as a painful, yet fond memory of my, and everyone else’s, rush experience.