For many, recruitment is the eighth ring of Hell. You hate the jumping. You hate the shouting. You hate this damn song. Every current pop song is ruined for you, because you’ve replaced it with lyrics about the bonds of sisterhood and how much you love movie nights because apparently, that’s the only thing you’re allowed to let PNMs know you do. You hate that you can’t drink. You hate that you can’t hang out with boys. You hate that you have to be up late every night, and up early every morning just so you can rehearse conversations in order to prove you have “real” connections. It’s all bogus. It’s not fun. And your recruitment chair is kind of a bitch.
I get it. I really do. Except I don’t. At all. Because I love recruitment.
The way I see it, you are a cynical bitch all year, no? You complain about study hours, you show up drunk to your philanthropy events, and you pretty much make your standards chair’s life a living hell. As well you should. What are sororities for if not getting shitfaced and totally disregarding the rules? You demand more mixers, but make your chairwomen beg you to go to sober events, and you’re basically a general nuisance bringing little to the chapter but your sparkling personality and your pretty face.
Nothing serious, but you lowkey stirred up some drama. You made out with some guy in Kappa Sig, and you honest-to-God had no idea he used to date a girl in your sorority. And I totally agree with you — if you aren’t close enough with her to know who her ex is, you aren’t close enough with her to stay away from him. But let’s all just admit it was a house divided there for a little bit.
After all this bitching and moaning, comes the “dreaded” recruitment practice. You are forced to spend four weeks straight with these people and pretend they’re all your best friends, when you really only regularly hang out with like, eight of them. You wake up together. You eat breakfast together. You take water breaks together. You pee together. You eat lunch together. You enter states of delirium together. And you are just always fucking together, together, together. It’s exhausting.
And then something happens. You’re paired with that junior who you never really talked to. And the recruitment chair is bitching at someone. And you notice an ever-so-perfectly placed sweat stain in her gray leggings. Her butt is smiling at you. And you lock eyes with that junior you were forced to stand next to in line and you swear on everything holy, she makes a face that looks identical to this girl’s butt. You snort out loud, you both get yelled at, and no one else knows why, but you two are in hysterics and you can not stop.
During skit practice a girl in “the other clique” in your pledge class stands right in front of you for your “Shake It Off” dance. Neither of you can ever get this one move, and no one really notices, but every practice you whisper “and UP, down, down, right, left, UP, right” to each other until you both get it, and it eventually becomes a secretly comical part of your routine.
And during bumping practice, you bump to your g-big’s best friend, with whom you’ve never spoken. You learn that you’re both super obsessed with astrology, and have exes that you HATE because they were Pisces. So you develop a pre-choreographed routine while bumping to bad PNMs where you tell her the girl you’re talking to is a Gemini, “but she, like, totally seems like a Pisces.” She gets the message every time. No bid.
And you start texting these random girls random things that make you think of them during the recruitment process. Eventually, you realize you’ve made new friends — great new friends — who you never would have hung out with if recruitment didn’t force you together. You look around the room and you take a moment to acknowledge that the “bullshit” you’re spewing to PNMs is actually true. It’s an almost magical feeling that only comes from being on “this side” of recruitment. You remember that this is really an incredible group of women that, too often, you take for granted. And no, you’re not best friends with all 150 of them. But there is not a girl in the room that you couldn’t potentially be best friends with. There’s not a single sister you wouldn’t be excited to see. You’d grab lunch with every single one of them, and have a great time. And that’s pretty special in this world.
In these few short weeks, you’ve grown closer to these women, and your love for your sorority is at an all-time high. And you’re taking that love you have for each other and making it grow by recruiting new members. You’re inviting more amazing people to love something as much as you love it. You’re doing something for this sorority that matters.
I know that people hate recruitment, because they think that the jumping, and the clapping, and the singing and the dancing, and the rehearsing makes it fake. But I don’t know. I think all that makes it real..
Nice Move483
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Veronica Ruckh
Veronica (@VeronicaRuckh) is the Director of Total Sorority Move for Grandex, Inc. After having spent her undergraduate years drinking $4 double LITs on a patio and drunk texting away potential suitors, she managed to graduate with an impressive GPA and an unimpressive engagement ring -- so unimpressive, in fact, some might say it's not there at all. Veronica has since been fulfilling her duties as "America's big," a title she gave to herself with the help of her giant ego. She has recently switched from vodka to wine on weekdays. Email her at veronica@grandex.co
@VeronicaRuckh
@VeronicaRuckh
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