As a recent graduate and with recruitment coming up, I thought I would share some thoughts on the process and life after bid day. As many of you know, Greek life is HUGE here at Ole Miss. That’s not to say your child won’t make incredible friends here if they opt not to join a Greek organization, but it certainly helps when it comes to meeting new people. I will go ahead and apologize for this monster of a post, but I wanted to offer a very real look at recruitment and share my experience!
I chose Ole Miss knowing that I wanted to rush and luckily, both of my parents were involved in Greek life during their time at the University of Tennessee and strongly encouraged joining a sorority. I went into college thinking I knew which sorority I wanted to join, and I was so very wrong. I was naïve and thought that since I didn’t know many people at Ole Miss, that I would be limited to choosing between a specific two sororities just because I already knew girls in those houses. There were highs and lows though out recruitment week for me, but the process really does work out exactly how it is supposed to. It was hard for me not to get my feelings hurt if I didn’t get invited back to a house I really liked, but if I had gotten invited back to every house I liked, the process would have been never ending! Recruitment is so much fun and should be taken lightly. It is easy to get caught up in process, but it’s easier to just sit back, enjoy the week and trust the process.
I’ll be honest, I made myself a bit neurotic during recruitment. When I went through, all of the girls were required to report to the Student Union between rounds and we weren’t allowed to have our phones. So, as you can imagine, hundreds of nervous 18 year-old girls in one building was a bit, for lack of a better word, stressful. If I saw one girl upset that she didn’t get invited back to a house she liked, I would get upset too. Why? I have no idea! It was like a domino effect, even if my day was going great! It was bizarre. Or if somebody got invited back to a house I liked, and I didn’t get invited back, I would wonder why I didn’t get asked back. I also made my mom neurotic with all these unnecessary thoughts. I can remember sitting at a table with all my friends and pretending that I was studying, but I was actually being sneaky and messaging my mom off my laptop.
“Mom you need to come in town I’m too anxious”
“This is so stressful”
“What if I end up in the wrong house”
“I just saw a girl crying”
“Mom I need you to come in town so that I can de-stress in your hotel room with room service”
“Susan, are you ever going to reply????? I NEED YOU”
Obviously, my mom was concerned. She had been planning on coming in town for bid day but didn’t think it was necessary to be in town for the entire week. It wasn’t necessary. At all. She didn’t end up coming during the week and came as planned for bid day. I survived. Without room service. Had I just trusted the process, I would have avoided all of that unnecessary worrying!
My mom says I inherit my worry wart genes from my great grandfather. I think she did too. I wasn’t asked back to the house I was a legacy to, which was fine with me, by that point in the week, I knew I was a better fit elsewhere. However, my mom didn’t take it so well. My dad said he could hear her loudly sobbing in the living room and when he went to see what was wrong, she could barely form words and was nearly hyperventilating. He thought she was about to say that I tragically died or something terrible had happened, so he started crying. Oh, the drama. When she could finally form words to let him know I hadn’t died, I had just been cut from her sorority, he responded with an eye roll and went back to watching Animal Planet. We love to laugh at how silly we were acting now that it’s all over. Again, had we just trusted that the process was going to work out how it is supposed to, The Susan Meltdown of 2014 could have been avoided.
On the first day of rush at the first sorority I visited, a girl named Josie came running out of the Kappa Kappa Gamma house yelling my name to lead me in and welcome me to Kappa. Little did I know, Josie would eventually become my big sister. I didn’t know a soul at Kappa, but by day three I knew it was where I was meant to be. And no, Kappa was not the sorority I thought I’d be joining. The rest of the week, I was just looking forward to going back to Kappa and hoping that they wanted me to come back too. On pref night, I went to Kappa and told Josie that I wanted to run home to sweet KKG the next morning. I cried happy tears and knew that I had found where I belonged.
It was later that night when I remembered that my mom had ordered me a bid day basket from Lily Pad. *Lightbulb goes off in my deranged head* The Lily Pad team would be up all night making bid day baskets to be at the sorority houses the next day, so that means they have the bid lists, right? Perfect, says me, the lunatic. So, I called Lily Pad at midnight pretending I was my mother and needing to know which sorority house she should wait for me at the next day. The Lily Pad phones were shut off, so I guess I wasn’t the only one who had that idea.
Plan=foiled.
Fortunately, there was a blue and blue basket waiting for me at the Kappa Kastle the next day. On bid day, I opened my bid card with my mom to see that I had received a bid to Kappa Kappa Gamma. We screamed, my mom cried happy tears and I ran down sorority row to the beautiful house that would be my home for the next four years.
Imagine that. The process worked.
If you take anything from my lengthy recruitment story, know this; the process works and your child will end up in the home away from home that is perfect for them. So, sit back, enjoy the week and trust the process.
Me, my mom and my friend Charlotte on bid day. She's the girl I met on the Inn at Ole Miss shuttle! (article here)
