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Old 07-27-2018, 11:55 AM
_RushPuppies_ _RushPuppies_ is offline
GreekChat Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2018
Posts: 19
Arrow BID DAY!

My recruitment group went out to breakfast with our recruitment guide on the morning of Bid Day. There were a few sorority women milling about in the place that we chose, but none of them were from houses that I could possibly be receiving a bid from, so I didn’t feel too uncomfortable. I arrived at the opening of the bids with two of my roommates. Our fourth roommate had been given a snap bid to Cuba, but had decided to decline it, thinking that she might go through recruitment the following year. Her GPA, although decent and from a large, competitive high school, had probably held her back from the houses that she had hoped for - and she knew a lot of the girls in a lot of the more competitive houses, so she had set her hopes fairly high. All of the women opened bids together…

My roommates were two very happy new members of Costa Rica

And my bid said…
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Dominican Republic

Also known as…

Wait, what? *record scratch* It wasn’t Ecuador?

My initial reaction was just...shock. I had loved Ecuador all week and based off of what I had heard from the girls that I talked to, they had loved me too. So many thoughts were spinning around in my head. Knowing what I know now, as a collegian with quite a bit more experience in Panhellenic life, I can say that I was dirty rushed and that Ecuador had said and done many things that go against NPC Unanimous Agreements. Although many of the girls in my recruitment group and many girls from the local area (including my roommate who also went to preference there) had said over the week that I would make the perfect Ecuador, it wasn’t meant to be. Having heard the things that the women said to me and then not having gotten my bid from them crushed my spirit for the initial thirty seconds. Everyone in my group was asking each other what they had gotten and I was the only one to receive my second choice, although I tried my hardest to play off the shock as excitement. We ran to our new pledge classes and got t-shirts and everyone else in Dominican Republic seemed so excited. There was even one girl that I had been line buddies with whose older sister was a recently-graduated Dominican Republic sister. I was happy to see her and happy to have one person with whom I felt a connection in my house.

The next few weeks were...just okay. Having read a LOT of GreekChat before recruitment, due to my lack of knowledge about Greek life in general, I knew that I had to put in a lot of effort if I wanted to make Dominican Republic my home. I went to every sisterhood event, always tried to sit with new people at chapter, went to football games with my sisters, went out to dinner and sat in dining halls with them, the whole enchilada. I even found a girl who I thought could be my big - and she wanted twins and had also bonded with my line buddy. But try as I might, I just didn’t feel connected to these girls. My desire to be studious and involved on campus wasn’t being fulfilled - the one group I was a part of just seemed to not be the right one for me, and the campus I went to was terrible at advertising student organizations and ways to get involved, so if you weren't in-state (I wasn't) and didn't already know someone in the group, you were SOL. I won’t go into too much detail, but the personality of the chapter and my personality just didn’t seem to line up, and I felt that it would be better to resign before receiving a big or going through initiation. I had talked to the girl who I thought might be my big about my doubts and she even admitted that she didn’t really like being in the house very much and wasn’t sure if she was going to stay. Even my line buddy, who was a chapter legacy, was very much doubting if she was going to go through initiation. I felt that if I was going to lose the two people in the chapter who I got along with well, then there wasn’t really a point in me going through initiation. I talked to the New Member chair and the President and turned in my pledge pin.

But the personality of the chapter wasn’t the only thing pushing me to resign. My choice in college didn’t really seem to be the right one. I had absolutely loved a school eight hours from home that was smaller and in a bigger city, and I had initially accepted the offer of admission and put a deposit down. However, when I received the scholarship at the big school, I was in a very weak time in my life. I was scared to go far from home and scared to go to college without at least one friend with me, so I chose the bigger school that offered a bigger scholarship because I knew that I could give it the “good old college try”, literally, and have one of my best friends from high school there with me. It was really just the wrong choice for me - I’m someone that loves to be hyper-involved in a lot of organizations and I need a challenge academically. I really wanted a community where I could wave to someone on the way to class, and at this big school, I walked a mile to my closest classroom and shared a lecture hall with over 400 students. None of the professors knew my name - not even in the Spanish class I had with only 12 other students - and I felt so much like a number. I wasn’t content to just live life as a number for four years, and my desire to transfer to the smaller school that was farther from home came around three or four weeks into the semester. I went home for the first time at the end of September and told my parents that I wanted to transfer to the smaller school that I had LOVED, and neither of them were surprised. If I transferred at semester, I could keep the scholarships that I had earned as a senior in high school, so I pulled the plug and turned in my transfer application. Best of all, I knew that I could do it, because due to my acceptance senior year, I was guaranteed admission as a transfer student. I left Dominican Republic and the big school behind…

But my sorority journey was not over yet! My new school had deferred recruitment in January and I was able to sign up! I was absolutely thrilled to have the opportunity to move into my new dorm early, acclimate to the campus before it filled up again, and most of all, to get involved from Day 1 at my new school through Greek life.

More to come

Last edited by _RushPuppies_; 07-27-2018 at 01:18 PM. Reason: had to fix a typo; it was driving me crazy
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