What would YOU do?
Okay, so I've weighed the pros and the cons in my head, but I don't feel like I know enough about the long term effects of the decisions I need to make not to come ask for help.
So here's my story: I'm a true freshman at a major university and I've been here for about a month and a half. When I got here, I went with my friends to my first major party on campus at a fraternity where we knew a friend of a friend. Since then, I've had a great deal of fun with this fraternity at the expense of not getting to REALLY know other fraternities. Sure, I've visited a couple (3 to be exact), but that doesn't account for a large percentage of the frats on campus and I didn't really spend a ton of time there. Now I'm a pledge at the fraternity that I spent all of my time at, and while I love the group of guys there and the parties are pretty fun, I feel like I didn't get to see the whole picture before I made the decision to rush (I was an early bid). A lot of my close friends are also pledging with me and a few of us are having our doubts now. We've had a few people drop out already and some of the losses were really emotional for some of the brothers in the house and it felt like a huge loss to us as a pledge class. We're really close friends as a pledge class and the brothers are sweet, but the house is trashed and they have an undeserved reputation on campus (basically a bunch of false gossip that got way out of hand). On top of all of this I have an extremely busy schedule with 2 jobs, classes, and a couple of organizations that I'm involved in.
Here's a list of my pros and cons.
Pros:
-The brothers are really chill, whenever I stop by, even when it's not an event or I'm asked over, I have a decent time
-The location of the house means that living in the house (which they really push so we have enough tenants to keep the house) would put me in a great spot on campus and save me money
-A lot of my close friends from outside of the frat are pledging as well
-I like to party
-Although the chapter itself is relatively new, the fraternity itself is very well known internationally and has a huge network of famous and influential people
Cons:
-They have a bad reputation on campus (it's undeserved, but it stuck unfortunately)
-The house is DIRTY. Not just frat dirty, dirty at a level that makes other frat houses look like a sorority. The house is in bad repair as well with obvious issues.
-If I'm initiated, I can't go back and change my mind later
-My schedule is super busy and I can barely make the pledge events. I feel like I'm falling behind
-A lot of the brothers smoke reefer and although I used to and I'm very tolerant of it, I'm sort of bothered when the entire house is smoking and I'm the only one who's doing anything else.
So I'm asking you guys, what would you do if you were me? Also, if you need more information to help you out, let me know.
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