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Bid Night
After a short break to get lunch and somewhat unwind, it was finally time for Bid Night. I was so so so nervous I couldn’t stand it. I walked over to a ballroom where they were having us meet up with our groups. I was so sad to see how small our little Rho Gamma group had gotten over the week. So many amazing girls decided not to continue or were dropped and it really broke my heart. Then there were the girls in my group who had gotten all of their tops back for the week and were acting like they were only joining for the most random reasons. One girl literally said that she was only joining to get a discount on car insurance haha? Okay girl okay you do your thing, I’m looking for some sisters over here haha. We walked into to ballroom and sat down so Panhellenic Exec. could give their speeches and the Rho Gamma’s could reveal their houses. Mine ended up being a CYAN and it made so much sense to me that she was one. She finally handed us our bid cards to hold and they started to count down.
10-9-8 I opened up the corner of my envelope and just waited.
7-6-5
I pictured myself running home to TURQUOISE and throwing up their sign surrounded by my new friends and all the amazing women I had met the past week.
4-3-2
1!!
I ripped open my card and saw
PURPLE
To say that I was disappointed would have been an understatement. I was absolutely devastated. So many girls around me were screaming and bouncing up and down and I just wanted to go back to my dorm room. I felt so conflicted because I was definitely upset but I didn’t want to seem ungrateful. It was a weird mix of emotions to feel all at once. Holding back tears I called my mom really quickly in the midst of the chaos to let her know what bid I recieved. She knew that I was very upset and asked me what I was going to do. I sighed and wiped a couple of tears away and told her that I was at least going to try it out, even if it was just for bid night. I didn’t want to be rude and not even give this house another chance, they obviously had saw something in me that made them want to extend me a bid so I wanted to try at least. Besides, I figured that there would be someone waiting at the house to be my Bid Night buddy and I pictured how sad she would’ve been if I hadn’t shown up.
I hung up with my mom. Ran over to where the other PURPLE girls were and put on my Bid Night shirt to run over to the house. Once we got there I was surprised to see that there weren’t any girls holding signs with our names on them like there were at other houses. Us new members were left to kinda hangout and mingle on our own around the house. Not knowing anyone, and not having any dorm friends there with me, I kinda stumbled around trying to socialize with taking some pictures. An active I recognized made eye contact and she came over to say hello before leaving to hangout with her friends. Let me just say, Bid Night can be an extremely intimidating and awkward night, and not having an active there to show you around and hangout with you made it even worse. A group of girls came up to me as I was taking some pictures with a small group and asked me if I was a freshman, when I said no they seemed a bit disappointed and left. Oh okay that was random? (I later found out they were a family, ggbig, gbig, and big looking for a freshman little to claim that night.) We were then gathered into their patio and had a frat group come and serenade us and give out roses and we were then pinned by a randomly assigned active. A different active came over and finally invited me to come over to her friends. We chatted for a little bit before it was time to head back.
Walking back from the house I took a backwards way from the usual pathway all the other new members were taking back from their houses and finally had time to let out a few tears. I felt horrible. Horrible because I hadn’t gotten TURQUOISE and horrible because Bid Night hadn’t even been fun. I was just extremely disappointed with the process and how everything had turned out. And then at the same time, I felt ungrateful for feeling this way. So many women had been cut the past week, I had a bid and yet, I felt so sad.
And this is where my story takes a bit of a turn. Over the next couple weeks I threw myself into the New Member process. I went to meetings, sat with girls in class, went to some mixers, and studied at the house, and yet it still just wasn’t clicking. All of my transfer friends had gone to other houses with big transfer classes and my house didn’t really have one that year. I was definitely sad about missing out on that experience that I had wished for.
One night I was driving home from running an errand when I got into a car accident. While I was okay physically (Rest in Peace to my poor car) I was mentally shaken. I began having serious panic attacks that would prevent me from doing almost anything. Any little thing could set me off and my mental health began to drop. That, compared to the homesickness I had been feeling, made me extremely distant and I began to grow apart from the few friends I had made in PURPLE. I finally talked to a counselor and she supported my idea of transferring so that I could be closer to home and could have my family there with me as a support system. I called the New Member Educator later that day and formally dropped from PURPLE. That next week I withdrew from the school.
Over the next year, as I waited for my transfer applications to go through, I sought more counseling for my panic attacks and they helped immensely. I applied to the same school I had been at again, and another school closer to home. I was accepted into both and decided to not return to the school I had been at. It was an extremely hard choice as this had been my dream school for so many years but I knew that it would be best for me to pick the school near my home.
That summer before classes started for my new school, I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to join a sorority anymore. I wasn’t sure if I could handle the stress and nervousness again but my mom (honestly she is an angel in disguise) knew how badly I had wanted to be one and have all the experiences that come with one. In September I started at my new school and started the rush process once again….
PART TWO COMING SOON
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