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Old 09-09-2014, 02:03 PM
HereComesTheSun HereComesTheSun is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2014
Posts: 18
House Tours Day!

I was feeling pretty good about Philanthropy yesterday and I was eager as usual to get my schedule for the day! Again, Panhellenic waited until the absolute last minute to give us our schedules back. I was the last name called by my Rho Gamma and when I finally got my schedule, I had no time to react.

1.Rutgers
2.USC

I had been dropped by 5 chapters. What did I do wrong? How did I get cut by so many? My Rho Gamma told us that many chapters drop PNMs for grades after the first round and if anytime during the week we were released from recruitment or got heavy cuts, we would be called at night to know before. So I was expecting the worse then and definitely didn't expect that coming today.

But being a sleep-deprived teenage girl that had a damper on her self-esteem, I cried. But I had to get myself together for my party at Rutgers.

So the first chapter I went to was Rutgers and half of the PNMs were getting house tours from members and the other half were having conversations in the living room. I was having my conversations first. I was talking to a woman and surprise! The first thing she said was: "So HereComesTheSun, I know you're _______'s sister. How's recruitment going. Are you liking it? Are you excited to be back at Rutgers? We really like you here and you're just like your sister, so you'll fit in great here."

She barely finished her sentence before I broke down crying. I couldn't take it anymore. Was I allowed any autonomy or freedom to be my own person anymore? It hurt so much and it was so frustrating because the majority of these women actually didn't even know my name and i'm pretty sure they wouldn't if I didn't have my name tag on. And even though I did just like everyone else, they still called me Baby (my sisters name or last name), Little (my sisters name or last name), _______'s sister or if they really just didn't care, my sisters name.

I throughout the week I smiled and said: "Hahaha my name is HereComesTheSun and I'd prefer that please!" But that didn't matter I guess. I felt permanently attached to my sister and Rutgers. I know i'm a legacy, so i'm considered as such, but this didn't feel right and it felt like this was being forced upon me against my will.

So I asked the girl rushing me if I could go to the bathroom and on my way to the bathroom, I saw my sister and she took me to the private bathroom and I bawled my eyes out in there. My sister told me that the girls in Rutgers were really trying to rush me hard because they knew I liked USC and they really wanted me. My sister again did not take part in membership selection or even talking to PNMs because she was growing so tired of Rutgers. So I finally got myself together and left the bathroom. The girl who was rushing me left and a woman I talked to early in the week on exec gave me a house tour.

She barely gave the tour and said to almost everything: "I'm sure you've already seen this" or "I'm sure you know about this from your sister.". But as she was showing me the rooms, she said: "We have 3 open spots in the house. Would you be interested in lving in?"

NO! I didn't like them at all and I've been in my dorm for 4 days! I wanted to get the freshman experience of living in a dorm and I told her that.

This house tour was a disaster and I couldn't wait to get out of here. After we finally left, I got to go on a break, then go to USC, which I couldn't wait for.

After my break, I went to USC and my day definitely got a lot better. The ladies were fun and sweet as usual and gave us a tour of the house which was beautiful. The girl I was talking to was really nice and funny and was asking me great questions and really getting to know me. She was telling me about how everyone in the house thought it was haunted and how they all stayed up the night before telling ghost stories of creepy things that happened in the house.

Then we started exchanging roommate stories and it was hilarious because my roommate talks in her sleep and there was a girl in the sleeping porch that walked in her sleep!

But I digress. I had a great time there and my friends gave me quick hugs and waves and it just felt really right there. I knew it before, but that day I could honestly really see myself being a member of that house, living in and even having a leadership position at some point because it just felt like home.

At USC, I felt like I could really be myself and I didn't feel like I had to be a D-1, all-star PNM like other chapters I visited. And they didn't make me feel uncomfortable or weird like other houses. Which is ironic in juxtaposition to Rutgers because I knew many girls at both houses and I know both houses liked me, but they both showed their interest and treated me completely differently.

Anyway, I had a great time and didn't want to leave. But after I did, I could do my preferencing early because I had no other chapters to go to for the day and since I didn' go to the maximum number, I just put down USC and Rutgers.

Later in the evening, we had programming where we learned all about preferencing and how the preference card was a binding contract that lasted up to a year with no exceptions and when it comes down to it, if you write all of the chapters you get, on bid day you get what you get. They told us a statistic that last year, 88% of the PNMs who maximized their options and put down all of the chapters they visited on pref day, whether it was one chapter, two chapters or three, got their first choice.

They really stressed the fact that you're supposed to maximize your options no matter what and not maximizing your options could be detrimental. I heard this before and even read it all the time on GreekChat and read the fact that if you did single intention preferencing, you would not be able to be made a quota addition, so this scared me into making myself maximize my options. Also, I remembered what the sophomore in my Rho Gamma group saying about how the biggest mistake she made was suiciding.

So I had all of that in my mind and the fear of tomorrow. Preference day.

Would I get invited back to USC? Would Rutgers finally drop me? Would I get invited back by anybody! This was probably one of the hardest days during recruitment because my mind was swirling with "what-if's"
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