My Sorority Recruitment Journey: Part One

I'm going to be doing a series of blogs about my sorority recruitment experience here at IU. I've never seen anyone write about recruitment (or rush, as it is more commonly known) as they are going through it, only after, so I hope this series will be a breath of fresh air for you!

Part One is going to be all about how I decided I wanted to go through recruitment and what my first impressions of what it will be like after meeting with my Rho Gamma. Don't know what that is? Stay tuned and you'll find out!

I'm not going to lie to you: for a long time, I was dead set against rushing. I totally believed all of the hyped-up stereotypes that aren't really true. Examples include: sorority girls are stupid, they're backstabbing, they pay money for their friends. But then I got to Bloomington and started seeing some sorority girls around campus, and they always seemed genuinely happy to be together and whenever I overheard snippets of conversation, I could tell they weren't dumb at all. What really pushed me into deciding that rush was something I wanted to do was actually on YouTube. You see, I really like makeup, and I like watching video reviews and tutorials. A couple of the beauty vloggers I'm subscribed to made videos about their recruitment experience, and seeing them light up with excitement about their chapters made me realize that I wanted something like that too. (By the way, if you're interested in watching the videos, you can find Kristee's here and Remi's here.)

So then I registered for recruitment, which was a stressful afternoon but nothing I couldn't handle. Then I waited. And waited. And then I waited a little bit more. I registered for recruitment in October, and we didn't get emails from our Rho Gammas until the first week after Thanksgiving. I knew it would take a long time to get everything organized, but oh my goodness the wait almost killed me! Oh, wait, what's a Rho Gamma, you ask? A Rho Gamma is your recruitment counselor, a full-fledged sorority member who helps a group of Potential New Members through recruitment. She disaffiliates from her sorority during recruitment so that she can't influence you to pick them or vice versa. My Rho Gamma's name is Grace, and she is amazing! In her very first email, she made a Harry Potter reference. My inner nerd (which, let's face it, isn't really "inner" at all) was very impressed by that. She set up a meeting for her group the following week, and she came with adorably decorated folders and a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuge itinerary of what we were going to talk about. She went through each stage of recruitment with us and gave some really great advice right up front. I won't go through all the gory details, because it's a ton of information that you will probably get bored by, but Grace helped ease my nerves a lot. Honestly, my main worry about recruitment was that no one in a sorority would have anything in common with me, and that this will all just be a big waste of my time and energy. Since Grace had something in common with me, it gave a confidence boost that other women in sororities would be like me as well.

That's it for this post, kids! I hope you enjoyed, and if you did, stay tuned for Part Two, coming in the next few weeks! And if you want to learn more about sorority life at IU here is the website that has all the information about it.

Until next time!

Katie