North by Northwestern

I am a sorority rush (sorry: recruitment) dropout.

This is not intended as a scathing exposé. My experiences with the actual Panhellenic Council and the many individuals I talked to throughout the week were mostly positive. But, in the end, I chose not to pledge.

A brief rundown of rush, for the uninitiated: The entire process lasts six nights. PNMs (Potential New Members) are herded through the sorority houses in decreasing numbers each night, based on which house (sorry: chapter) of those they chose asks them back.

Since it’s a “mutual selection process,” you select houses, too. You tell your recruitment counselor your preferences; she sends them along with a smile. What your recruitment counselor won’t tell you is that your preferences often have little to no effect on the actual houses you return to. Technically, the sororities are judging on “fit,” based on how well you mesh with the members of an individual house. But your schedule seems more determined by which sororities have judged you (a) attractive enough and (b) interesting enough.

Going into recruitment, I made a promise to myself: I swore that I would only join a sorority if I felt comfortable with the sisters there. I tried to avoid making mental top 10 lists or singling out any particular sorority as “The One.” There is more than one “right” sorority for every girl.

I didn’t listen to myself. One sorority topped my list every night, and I idealized it as the perfect house — until they didn’t call me back. The moment I received the list of houses I was attending the next day, only to find “The One” glaringly missing from the list, was the most devastating of rush. I spent days analyzing that rejection. My conversations had been interesting (I thought). I looked particularly fantastic my last night there (I thought).

So I said, what the hell, I never pinned myself as the sorority type, anyway. In high school I read Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities and swore I would never, ever go to a school that had sororities because the book made them out to be coke-fueled brothels.

Of course, real sororities here aren’t necessarily like that. I met three girls a day at every house, and many conversations went above and beyond the stereotypical “Major? Dorm? Hometown?” outline. Rush is inherently awkward, especially for someone who finds conversation with another human being enormously intimidating. I can’t count the number of times I discussed Stir-Fry Steve and the awesome super-fantastic benefits of living in Hinman on one hand. Or two. Or on all my limbs combined.

But what did I learn from the orgy of awkwardness that was rush?

Some of the coolest people I know didn’t get invited back to the sororities they liked. This frequently turned into a pity party as my friends dropped out, one by one. One in particular — a girl I adore and was initially scared would get into a fantastic sorority and forget all about me — came back crushed a few nights into recruitment, rejected not only by every house she liked but also by most houses she didn’t. Were we ugly? Did we fail to impress anyone? We had no idea why we were invited back to one house and not another.

Rush is a great way to throw your morale to the ground and kick it around for a few days. Some of the best conversations I had were at houses I ended up not being invited back to. Practice not taking it personally. I would like to think that no sororities maliciously eliminate girls to fit their specified acceptance quotas, but it’s difficult when documentaries and hearsay invoke rumors of numerical rankings on personality and appearance.

I learned that allowing one aspect of your life to define who you are is a route to failure. Watching Facebook statuses change after Bid Night was both annoying and depressing, and for a few days I avoided any conversations about sororities, rush or even the language and culture of ancient Greece. But the great thing about Northwestern (not to get sappy on you) is there are a myriad of activities to get involved in. While Greek life is one avenue, there are a million other clubs and activities to join.

And if worse comes to worse, you can form your own secret society with Mary Desler. Which, I’m sure, will have A+ social activities.