rush diaries | part 2

it’s march 7^th at 7:52 pm and I am still in a sorority. this tuesday our ‘bigs’ are revealed, so get ready for another instagram blast. every caption reads “in love with my big” or some ridiculous variation of the prior. what most of the girls posting don’t realize is that other people do understand is that probably 20 minutes before the picture frenzy began, the two girls in the picture were just introduced for the first or second time.

I like most things about being in a sorority. I like the potential friendships, the unique similarity/bond we now all have to each other, and the fun activities. but I also find that it’s a huge time commitment. I work (I know, unbelievable) during almost every important sorority event. I fall behind on what goes on. like I just learned last week that the journals we were given from our bigs were used to communicate back and forth with them. I literally thought they were a gift, a diary. I never bothered getting mine and writing in it until this week. the paddles we make? yeah when my new member class sent in a bulk order I put in the group: “honestly what even is this about” and no one answered me. sisterhood!!! I just bought my paddle yesterday. still don’t have my letters.

I don’t like the forced unity. I don’t like that we must wear pure white to some events, with pure white shoes. why would I own pure white shoes? why would I even own cream shoes? why would I own blanched almond colored shoes?

rush diaries

this weekend I participated in something I never, nor anybody with any remote knowledge of me, thought I would do. no I’m not making an ask alice reference; I’m making a sorority reference. that’s right, I rushed. at babson, greek life is very limited – we only have three sororities and four fraternities on campus. they’re all very low key, which is why I decided I would give sisterhood a shot. if I were at a school down south, I would stay far, far away (as in fairytale far, far away) during rush week.

the first event was on a wednesday: orientation. I was rubbed the wrong way. about seventy girls shoved in an auditorium being told that five days from now we would be running to our new home. no???

1. I wasn’t going to be running anywhere.
2. everything seemed so artificial to me. I prefer to make friends organically.
3. in every picture shown, girls were all dressed the same. pass. I thrive on originality.

but nevertheless, I threw out my judgments and pushed forward. on thursday, the first official night of rush, all of the girls split into three groups and went to each sorority’s party in casual attire. showing off my great enthusiasm for the entire process and wanting to put my best foot forward, I decided to show up fresh from the gym, unbathed, and sporting no make-up. the first one I visited was sigma kappa, then off to chi omega I trooped. exhausted after two hours of answering the most generic questions known to man (where are you from? why babson? what are you involved in?), I forced myself to travel to the last sorority, kappa kappa gamma. immediately the kkg girls started singing and snapping, so naturally I grimaced and then mentally escaped.