It's time for.... orientation week!
I moved in with 20something Roommate and things were going great! My ID photo looked good and I was good to go! I started hanging out with a bunch of girls on my hall as well as my roommate, including a girl I'll call 20something Hallmate. I had an RA who was Greek but was serving as a Rho Chi so I didn't know which org she belonged to. I really, really, really liked her right off the bat though. She gave a brief introduction to Greek Life the first night in the dorm and said that she had joined the perfect place for her but a really unexpected place and people had trouble guessing which one it was, but it was the perfect one for her.
We went to a bunch of parties during orientation week - basically all the frat guys come back early and throw illegal parties during the evenings of orientation week.
One of the big events of orientation at my college is "University Big Brother/Sister" day. You get paired up with someone from your geographic region who takes you out for dinner. I met my University Big Sister when she came to my room during move-in day and chatted with me and my parents. But when I showed up to Big Sister dinner, she wasn't there! I felt really stupid. I later found out that she'd emailed me to ask if I wanted to do anything that night. I never got the email because my computer hadn't been set up yet. I was to find out much later, when I was a University Big Sister, that you're always supposed to show up to the meeting spot anyway and not email your person because they usually don't have email ready yet.
I also found out that my Big Sister was a member of Brooke. Strike Two (or was it Three?) for Brooke!
However, another person adopted me during University Big Sister night! My Unofficial Big Sister was definitely not from the same geographical region as me, but she was a badass and quickly became like my FAVORITE upperclassman woman. She had a hilarious and off-the-wall sense of humor and I couldn't stop laughing when I was around her! She was a member of Peyton. I didn't know anything about Peyton from my college visit, which was a mark in their favor. Already on meeting and starting to hang out with my Unofficial Big, I really felt that I would love to be a part of Peyton. I felt that she would love for me to join too! She talked a lot about her sorority activities right off the bat. A big part of what upperclasswomen do during fall term is try to encourage freshmen to rush, and she did a great job of that!
I also found I was meeting a lot of Peytons at parties. First off, I should state that I tend to make friends easier with guys. So I had a big group of guy friends that I met during orientation week that I would go around to parties with, along with 20something Roommate. (20something Hallmate was even more naive/conservative than Roommate and I and refused to go to parties.) I quickly became familiar with the fraternities they were looking at and started ranking my favorite places to hang out. The primary places we hung out were:
MOR Central Frat - pretty much what it says. A lot of northern guys and southern guys from smaller towns/high schools. Probably bottom-mid tier or top of the bottom and the "coolest" place I was hanging out at that time.
Hippie/yuppie Frat - I know this sounds weird, but it was a bunch of pot smokers and really preppy kids from Connecticut. Go figure. Oh yeah, and my RA was dating a brother.
Nerdy Campus Leader Frat - This was traditionally considered one of the "bottom" fraternities but had made a lot of leaps in recruiting campus leaders and had grown a lot in recent years. They still had a bit of a complex about being just above just plan Nerdy Frat.
As you can probably guess, I wasn't necessarily Ms. Popularity. I wasn't going to the big houses and not even a lot of the mid-tier houses like Soccer Frat. But I didn't care because I really liked my friends.
I found that during orientation week I was meeting a lot of Peytons at the houses, especially at MOR Central, which was quickly developing into my favorite place. Most of my guy friends wanted to join there initially too. It was just a cool place that had a variety of guys and still liked to party. The Peytons seemed to be all up in MOR Central! As well as Hippie/yuppie frat, though a weird mix of girls from other groups also hung out there. (I later found out that this was because it was a pot-smoking type place.) At Nerdy Campus Leader Frat, there were more Haleys than Peytons probably, but somewhat of a mix.
During orientation week, a guy from MOR Central starting pursuing me. He even sent flowers to my dorm room the day after meeting me! So before too long, we had DTRed and I had an upperclassmen boyfriend! This was considered a big accomplishment and help in rush at my college. He also had a bunch of friends from his class who were Peytons, which was cool. Through him I met a bunch of girls from the dorm across the street, who all wanted to join Peyton. That was cool! 20something Roommate and 20something Hallmate weren't quite as "social" as me, so I was hoping that knowing girls across the street would help me in recruitment....
As an aside, I hadn't started drinking at all yet, so that wasn't an issue for me yet.
So that's the important stuff about orientation week! Next I'll make a general post about what happened during fall term/informal recruitment, and the girls I met through the organizations I joined on campus.
