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The Honest Differences Between Recruitment And Real-Life

Recruitment

This is your Recruitment Chair speaking. After serving as RC for my sorority, I have deemed myself to be the undisputed expert on all matters of sorority recruitment worldwide. Whether or not this is actually true, I still want to use my nearly unlimited wealth of knowledge to help all of you PNMs out there to understand what’s going on in the world of recruitment.

My main job as RC was to make sure that everything had the appearance of being absolutely perfect at all times. We want to put our best foot forward for you. We want you to feel like if you’re not one of us, you will literally die. It’s not all that different from how you act around the guy you like – when you’re getting ready for your first date or prom or your formal, you spend hours getting ready, making yourself as attractive as humanly possible. You say all of the right things and you flirt in all of the right ways. You do everything you can to make them want you. However, when you’re actually in the relationship, it’s a little bit different. You no longer have to physically impress each other, and your dates consist of laying around in bed with no bra or makeup on, watching Netflix. Even though you don’t look anything like you did when you were getting ready for that first date, it’s okay, because you love each other way more than you ever thought possible and that’s so much better than looking perfect all of the time.

Recruitment is exactly like that. But when you’re navigating this process for the very first time, it can be really hard to sort out what’s reality and what’s a byproduct of us trying to woo you. Thankfully, you have me to help sort out all of the bullshit for you. Here’s my breakdown of what actually happens during recruitment versus how things actually happen in real life. You’re welcome.

Recruitment: Every single girl looks like physical perfection every single minute of every single day.
Real Life: Sometimes we look perfect. Sometimes we’re walk-of-shaming in last night’s clothes and bed head. Sometimes we’re exhausted and show up at our 8 a.m. class in leggings, a top knot, and no bra. Yes, we have the ability to look like 10s, but sometimes our natural 7.5s come out. We’re just really excited to meet you and we want you to like us and we want to show you that by dressing up to impress you.

Recruitment: These girls are happy all. the. time. and they never stop smiling.
Real Life: These girls are happy a lot of the time. We love each other, we love life, and we love to have fun. We also have other emotions. We get cranky, we get angry, we get sad, we get frustrated. Basically, we’re human people with human emotions, and once we get close to you, you’ll be able to be there for us when we’re acting or feeling pretty shitty.

Recruitment: These girls won’t stop talking about their focus on philanthropy. Do they actually do fun things?
Real Life: We’re really proud of our philanthropy work and how much money we raise for our favorite charity. And we brag about that, because that’s one of our biggest accomplishments and lets be honest, it’s a great pickup line. But yes, we love to have fun. Everyone has fun in their own way – some of us dress up and go out to bars and dance and drink and flirt with boys. Some of us go to house parties and dance and drink and flirt with boys. Some of us lie on the floor of our dorm with our best friends and play board games and have Harry Potter marathons through the middle of the night. Most of us do some combination of all of the above.

Recruitment: These girls won’t stop taking pictures.
Real Life: These girls won’t stop taking pictures.

Recruitment: These girls love each and every single one of their sisters.
Real Life: We love each and every one of our sisters, but that doesn’t mean we like them all equally at every moment. Some girls are our best best best friends and we love them so much it feels like our hearts will explode. Some girls voted for someone else for the officer position we wanted or said something mean about us behind our backs or got the attention of the boy we liked and in that moment we hate each other. But like any relationship, we almost always forget about it, move past it, and keep on loving each other. Almost always.

Recruitment:These girls are all obsessed with each other and don’t have any other friends outside of their sorority.
Real Life: Each girl has a mix of friends in her sorority, friends in other sororities, and friends in no sorority at all. During recruitment, we want you to get to know all of us, see how we interact with each other, and see how fun being part of a sisterhood can be. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have other friendships. We have friends from our hall in our dorm, friends from our major, and friends that hang around with us so much that they’re basically honorary members of our sorority. Our sorority sisterhood is extra special to us, but we still have plenty of love to go around for everyone else.

Recruitment: These girls seem really, really awesome.
Real Life: These girls are really, really awesome, and you’ll never feel that more than when you’re finally their sister.

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RecruitmentChairTSM

RecruitmentChairTSM (@TheRecruitChair) is a contributing writer for Total Sorority Move. This current grad student and ex-sorority girl survives solely on Diet Coke and the tears of the pledges she personally victimized. She's a Monica, a Marnie, a Miranda, and a Regina. Her favorite hobbies include drinking $14 bottles of wine and binge-watching season 2 of Grey's Anatomy until she cries. You can send her annoying e-mails at [email protected]

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