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I woke up the next day still feeling bleary-eyed. The weather started to cool off this day and we traded high-fifties and warm sunshine for dull gray rain. Luckily, the day was slightly shorter, so we weren’t standing outside for too long. I made my way over to the academic building to get my schedule in the morning but we had all of our parties after lunch, meaning that everyone came over in sweats. My schedule read:
Tango
Salsa
Cha Cha Cha
Merengue
I was dropped from Plena, which had been my favorite house for the first two days. My recruitment counselor asked me if I was okay, since the day before, I had expressed how much I liked it, but honestly, I would have given Plena an 8 for the first two days and I would have given Salsa and Merengue 7s, so I wasn’t very broken up about it. Plus, I figured that I had less of an advantage than everyone who had been here the semester before. I was happy to have four - a lot of people only had two today and getting cut by a favorite house or two today was par for the course for just about everyone. There was a girl in my hallway who wanted to be a Salsa since the day she stepped on campus - we’ll call her Amanda - and she had spent a ton of time hanging out with our RA, who was a sophomore Salsa. She had gotten cut from Salsa today and only had two houses remaining but was so blindsided that it took practically the whole hallway of girls to convince Amanda to at least go to the parties and drop afterwards if she really didn’t like them.
This reveals my age a little bit, but today was Skit Day!
I still think Skit Day is the shiz. As a transfer student, I had no idea going in how helpful it would be to see the chapters interact as a whole and to see what the vibe and personality of the house was, as opposed to just talking to individuals, because every girl talking to you during recruitment is going to be extremely nice and that’s just how it goes. So after a massive clothing swap in the hallway to get everyone into something business-casual (I borrowed a blazer from Amanda), we set off to see the skits.
First up was Tango, and I swear to Gawd that this is probably the story that I have told and will continue to tell more than any other story in my life. I sat down with a girl to watch the skit. It was very put-together and polished and did a good job of telling the story, although there wasn’t much emphasis on the chapter and it was mostly just a cute skit. The sisters in the room are all laughing at coordinated moments and turning to their respective PNMs at the exact same times to tell them short little facts. I found this to be a little off-putting and robotic, but hey, recruitment isn’t always the most natural thing in the world. What happened after was just completely wild.
So Tango finishes their skit, and the room applauds nicely and then conversations begin again and there’s a good buzz in the room. My rusher turns to me slowly, and goes,
“So, I was adopted.”
She bursts into tears and heavy sobs, telling me how she had a terrible childhood and never had friends until she joined her sorority. She’s completely inconsolable and frankly, difficult to understand through the crying. I’m trying to comfort her, but I’m not sure whether to go along with it or to try to change the subject, and I’m looking around wildly to see if this is happening to anyone else. Nope, no one else is crying, everyone else is laughing and having a great time, and as I’m looking around, I noticed that every Tango sister is super done up in terms of hair, makeup, and outfit, and I’m just getting this sinking feeling that I can’t see myself in the chair opposite of me in a year. At the end of the party (aka after crying for the better part of 40 minutes post-skit), my rusher dries her eyes and walks me to the door, and I just think to myself, well, that made my choice a little easier. Obviously, there is nothing wrong with being adopted, and we all get a little emotional during a long recruitment week, but her outburst caught me so off-guard that I just had no idea what to do. I mentioned this story to someone this past year, and she asked me who the girl was - it was her freshman roommate, and apparently she did this a LOT. Like when she left dirty dishes on the floor of their dorm room and my friend asked her to pick them up, she burst into tears about being adopted and not having friends. Another person had seen her do it in front of a professor. It was, in a word, odd.
Moving along with Skit Day…
Salsa had a very cute and upbeat skit. It was about being new to college and looking for all of the resources that a sorority would provide. The girls talked about their favorite parts of being in their chapter and what it had done for them. It was very sweet. I talked to two girls today, although there seemed to be some issue with the bumping, because after the first girl had talked to me for a while, she told me she’d be right back, and then about two minutes later, another girl came back in her place. Weird, but as a PNM, I really didn’t know any better. Everyone seemed very very nice at Salsa, and I hoped to be back for Preference (and I also hoped that Amanda was enjoying her parties and wouldn’t be moping about Salsa when I came back to the dorm that night).
Cha Cha didn’t really wow me today. Their skit was very Disney-esque, with some high-energy numbers and a very cute theme that was a play on their sorority’s name. It was fun and nostalgic. They paired me off with a girl and I was trying so hard to smile and be attentive but my face was so tired from smiling all week that my eyelid started twitching and my cheek started hurting. Everyone seemed very down-to-earth and friendly here, but I just didn’t feel a spark yet. I wasn’t sure where I would rank this chapter.
My last party of the day was at Merengue, and it was amazing! The skit used my exact form of humor and played off a TV show that I absolutely love to pieces. The first girl that I talked to asked me what I was involved in on campus, and I said that I was a transfer student and had just gotten there three days ago. She stopped me and said that she did the exact same thing two years prior, and she goes, “I bet all you’ve talked about all week is where you went before, why you didn’t like it, and why you wanted to come here. I want to talk to you about stuff that really matters and really get to know you.” She was bang on the money and did an amazing job asking me more personal and unconventional questions. I was so glad to have her to talk to because I knew that she knew exactly how I was feeling. It was such a breath of fresh air. I was bumped by a sophomore who was from one state over. I honestly can only remember talking about Harry Potter and a few other things, but I CLICKED with this girl. I just wanted to be her friend so freakin’ badly. I walked out of Merengue feeling tired from a roller-coaster of events, but knowing exactly what I would do for my rankings:
1s: Salsa, Merengue
2: Tango
3: Cha Cha Cha
Even though I had a weird experience for skits at Tango, I had much preferred it in the two days prior to Cha Cha, so I chose to preference it as my first alternate.
One more round of parties left!
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