The beginning of my experience with Greek life was the antithesis of what I wanted my years at TCU to look like, but it ended up being something I am very grateful to have joined. When I first started looking at colleges, I fell in love with and ended up only applying to TCU. TCU’s campus, community, sports, and college atmosphere always intrigued me, and I knew I needed to be here.
I talk about this quite often in my sociology courses, but TCU, from the beginning, teaches us to “get connected,” and one of the biggest ways to do so is by joining a fraternity or sorority on campus. When considering joining one, my mom was a big advocate for the sorority lifestyle, especially due to her affiliation with one at her university. My mom’s stories of sorority life and her obvious close connection with her sorority sisters to this day inspired me.
When I got to TCU for the start of recruitment, I was scared sh*tless. I had no idea what I was doing. I heard rumors left and right about all of the sororities, and it was so hard to filter through what was accurate and what was just gossip. It wouldn’t have mattered as much to 14-year-old Kailee, but college Kailee was losing her marbles. This was a completely new experience for me, and I didn’t know where to start.
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Now, this is where it gets a little interesting; we’re going to get into the nitty gritty of recruitment at TCU. Keep in mind — these are my OWN personal experiences and do not reflect the thoughts or feelings of every girl in a sorority at TCU.
On the first day of TCU 2021 recruitment, we had masks on (COVID), and we all piled into the basketball arena. When I tell you there was a sea of girls, I’m not even exaggerating. There were more girls in one stadium than I had ever seen in my entire life, and this is coming from a dance/cheer competition girl. So many girls were lined up to go inside, all talking about what sororities they wanted and getting to know one another. You could almost cut the nervous energy with a knife; it was so thick. My roommates and I huddled together like three scared puppy dogs, which made the experience all the more terrifying.
Fast forward to us getting checked in with our Rho Gamma groups and finding out which houses we were scheduled to visit. There were girls to the left and right of me who got all 12 houses or 8, 6, 5, or 4 houses, and then there was me… I had only two houses on my list. I couldn’t help but feel a bit hurt by this, as I didn’t know what I did wrong and what the others didn’t like about me. It almost felt like getting rejected from a college. I didn’t even get my mom’s house back, which made me extra upset, even though I thought I would never fit in with those girls. Not getting called back to those sororities was a blessing in disguise, however, because I was 10 steps closer to my future house.
At the end of recruitment, I only had my current house left, and that was the first time I cried during recruitment. I remember being so sad about getting dropped from a house that I was convinced would be mine forever, but now I am more in love with the woman I have become because I chose to stick it out.
Time to boast a little about my sorority, so bear with me. My sorority is one of the most diverse, supportive, and expressive groups of women that I have had the pleasure to surround myself with. The girls of this sorority have come from so many different backgrounds, have varying thoughts on life, and are so smart. I know I won’t be best friends with every single one of them, but I believe that they are all beautiful souls. I have made so many fond memories and bonds that will never be broken, and I hope that I continue to grow and change with them over the next year.
When I think of people in my life that I am grateful for at TCU, about half of them are in my sorority alone. Without a specific, perfectly curated collection of girls, I wouldn’t be the person I am today, and without the sorority as a whole, I wouldn’t have the connections that I treasure now. I wouldn’t have met my best friend or experienced what “sisterhood” really felt like, and I can say with full confidence that I’m glad I decided to walk into that basketball stadium that day.
Shout out to my two littles (you know who you are): y’all have inspired me to be a better person, have some fun every once in a while, and be the person I was meant to be. You are two of the biggest reasons I am still in this sorority, and you’ve both made my TCU experience so much better.
There were many times that I reconsidered my decision to go through recruitment in the first place, but I am so glad I did it. For all the reasons listed above, my perspective changed. I originally thought that being in a Greek sorority would be pointless and filled with drama (since that was my experience with cheer and dance), and sometimes it can involve drama, but I’ve never thought the experience was pointless.
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Now, should you go through sorority recruitment? Yes. However, if you are unsure about the decision, I recommend asking someone you trust to see what they think. If you are open-minded to new experiences and perspectives and are interested in learning a unique outlook on what it means to support something bigger than yourself, I would say go for it. Take the leap of faith, and maybe, like me, you’ll end up enjoying the experience more than you previously thought.
P.S.
TCU Greek life, thank you for the sorority that you’ve given me and thank you for bringing me the friends I got from being in my sorority.
Keep being you.
-K