This post is all about why you should do sorority recruitment even when you don’t think you are the “sorority type”. You don’t have to love it to try it.
Guys, I’m just going to be straight up. Recruitment is not fun. No matter how many cheers my Pi Chi’s made me yell saying “Recruitment is fun”, that doesn’t make it true.
So I’m going to be honest with you and share all of the bad things I have to say about recruitment. But then hopefully I can shed a light on it about the positives too. I don’t wanna B.S. it and say that everything is amazing. It’s not.
Recruitment is hard. Especially if you are like me where down south, they have recruitment prior to school starting. So a lot of the problems I had weren’t recruitment related but because it was my first week away from home!
I think the biggest issue I had with recruitment personally was that it was so draining: emotionally and physically. You have full days and few breaks. And for some reason you can only go to the bathroom at lunch, yet need to be chugging water because of the heat. That doesn’t work out well.
Now I know that there are some things about recruitment that you just can’t change. For example, as recruitment carries on, you might have 4 hours in between events and just have to sit in the holding area. It sucks but that’s the way it is because not everybody can have events at the same house.
However, one thing that I know many girls struggled with was if you got cut from a house, there was no second chances. BUUTTTT…. if you didn’t select a house back, you still had to go to the event and give them a second chance.
Potential New Members (PNMs) are required to go to every event or else they are kicked out of the recruitment process completely. I think that this rule is silly because if a house isn’t required to give you multiple chances, I don’t think the standard should be different for the PNM.
It’s unfortunate because PNMs are so exhausted and when we have to go to a house we know doesn’t feel right for us, it gets annoying.
During my rush process, it actually made me sad because girls who didn’t want to be at the event were complaining and trashing the house which made me feel bad for wanting to be there.
Now I know other people’s opinions do not matter enough to affect my choice of sorority but it still didn’t feel good.
Another thing that is hard about sorority recruitment is that it is so long and you really get emotionally invested. Girls were crying about their favorite houses cutting them by round two. I wasn’t really like that, but I definitely was sobbing by preference round when I got cut by my number one house.
Finally, the worst part about sorority recruitment (for me, not everyone!) was that it was my first week away from home. I quickly realized how good I had it with my dad’s cooking, my mom’s advice and my sisters laughter and company.
I struggled with finding my way around campus. I ate sandwiches and chips religiously for ten days. I got dehydrated and physically ill. I had to adjust to long distance with my boyfriend who I spent my whole summer alongside. It was a lot for me at once.
Now on a more positive note,
Even though I was going through so many changes in my life and was struggling, I am thankful for recruitment because it helped me find people in my corner.
My Pi Chi’s Erin and Mace were lifesavers. They were my friends. They were my mentors. And they were my substitute mom when I really needed one (which was often).
Literally if you are reading this and aren’t sure you want to rush, just do it for the Pi Chi’s. They significantly eased my transition into college. I always love having a mentor, someone to look up to, someone who wants to show me the ropes and give me advice. My Pi Chi’s were that for me.
The best thing is, they aren’t just there for you during recruitment. They wanted to help me with all of the things going on in my life not just picking a sorority house.
I can’t even tell you how many times I wanted to drop recruitment because I didn’t have the perfect “at home” feeling in the sorority house but they kept encouraging me that that was okay and completely normal.
Recruitment also makes it really easy to make friends. You are always in line or at an event or in the holding area surrounded by people. It gets boring, so everyone just starts chatting it up because we all have something in common.
Once school started, I found it was harder to start a conversation with a random girl because I didn’t know what to talk about. In rush, you can easily just talk about your day and bond over how exhausted you are with the process.
Through my recruitment Pi Chi group, I met some of my close friends who live in my building that I probably wouldn’t have met. They made me laugh during the boring hours, went out to dinner with me, and we allowed each other to cry and hug it out when the process was too much.
By the time all of the other students arrived to campus, I felt like a veteran. I had the whole campus figured out and knew where my classes were (shout out to my Pi Chi’s). I actually found myself getting annoyed with other freshman because they were interrupting my routine when they were moving in or got lost haha.
Moral of the story:
I am glad I went through recruitment. I’m glad I went through all of those challenges because now I feel like I can do anything. I am thankful to have had my Pi Chi’s there to hold my hand and encourage me through the transition. And I couldn’t be happier to have made friends that would laugh and cry alongside me through it all.
Give sorority a recruitment a try. If you hate it, then at least you’ll know it wasn’t for you and have no “what if” feelings later.
Sincerely,
Meghan Ann
