[ASTalumna06]

Ironically, this showed up on my Facebook page earlier today:

http://blog.phiredup.com/redefining-...-and-sorority/

Every time I’m around my sorority sisters or on a campus working with fraternity/sorority members or the professional staff, I ask what seems like 10 million questions. Recently, that question has been “What is One Thing You Wish Fraternity/Sorority Would Have Told You Before You Joined?” I expected to get the typical responses of cost and time commitment, but this wasn’t the case. The overwhelming response I get instead is along the lines of…

“I wish someone would have told me how hard making friends was going to be.”

This blows my mind. Here we are, SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS, and our members struggle to find friends? The more I reflect on this, and the more I dive into question mode to learn why, I can’t help but think that fraternities and sororities have failed to define and create an expectation on what friendship REALLY looks like on the inside of our organizations.

Think about it. We preach brotherhood and sisterhood, which implies a family-like connection with others. We show photos of us laughing and being best friends with each other on our social media and during recruitment. We share stories about the fun things we do as an organization. What we don’t do is set the expectation that this close family-like connection does not come automatically with a bid. Actually, most individuals I talk to shared that it takes anywhere from a semester to a full year to find the people in their organization that feel like family. That connection is there waiting for us, but it takes time to find and build.