When I told my friends at Vassar that I wanted to join a sorority during my junior year abroad, I received mostly disapproving looks accompanied by sad sighs of, “Oh, are you really sure you want to do that?” I understand where the judgement came from. There are big BIG problems with Greek Life.
At the same time, there are also some unfair stereotypes about sororities. Some are true, but why do they have to be so negative? For example, I love a good cult. Chanting, robes, secret rituals? Sign me up. I am so into cloaks that I wrote about how good I look in a stylish cloak in my college admissions essays. I have four cloaks—one for every occasion. I have a warm and water-resistant cloak for winter walks and a Harry Potter cloak for cosplay. I also have a basic witch cloak for when I’m feeling spooky and I have a sparkly silver cloak for going out. As you can see, I was made for sorority life.
Joining a sorority really turned me into the stereotype. Before I was a sorority girl, I would lay in bed eating potato chips clad in ripped sweatpants that I had been in for four days because I didn’t have the energy to take a shower and change. Now that I am a sorority girl, I am definitely not doing anything described in the previous sentence. I’m out prancing around town in my Jimmy Choos on my way to a yacht party where I’ll be shotgunning my Claws as all of my sorority sisters are tossing $1,000 bills into the ocean. Finally something for the fish to eat that’s not plastic.
Sorority life is just party life. I don’t even talk to other girls in my sorority unless we are at a frat on a Wednesday night and I ask them to go to the bathroom with me because I REALLY need to pee. There’s no more going to the bathroom alone. (However, I don’t think I’ve ever gone to the bathroom alone in my entire life. Even if it’s 4 a.m. and I have just woken up from a dream where I am peeing my pants and I am about to soak my entire bed, I will wake up a random neighbor and make them come with me.)
I’m moving into my sorority house in the winter. It is just like living in the dorms except it has a nice kitchen where dirty dishes get washed and the residents actually treat it with care. I know that’s a hard concept to fully comprehend. The nicest part about living in the house will be that I can just walk downstairs to a party. I don’t need to put on shoes, a coat, a bra or pants. Junior year really does be like that for everyone.
Probably the worst part of being in a sorority is that we have to interact with the frats. Frat boys are terrible at texting back. Maybe this is actually a trait of all boys, because when I was in high school I kept texting this boy to hang out and he would rarely answer me and when he did make plans, he wouldn’t show up. So then I would text his mother in hopes of getting him in trouble and then he stopped responding to me at all?!?! I thought maybe he just wasn’t into girls, but I just saw a Thanksgiving Instagram post where he’s cozying up to a girl with the caption that her family now calls him “baby wy wy.” This made me realize that maybe he actually does text girls back and maybe I can’t make generalizations about boys based on literally two interactions I’ve had with them in my life. I went to an all-girls school. I don’t know what to tell you.
Based on my two past boy incidents, it only makes sense that I’ve found it incredibly difficult to interact with the “frat” category of boy. I didn’t understand at the time what their brand of flirting looks like, but I’ll give you my favorite example from a frat, trip-kap (they are referred to as trip-kap, not their letters [KKK] because that’s not the branding you want associated with your frat. Apparently the frat existed before the KKK and tried suing them for using their letters to represent a hate-group, but unfortunately, that didn’t work out.) Hopefully this factoid will be useful in your future.
A boy walks over to me and points to my Apple Watch (quintessential sorority girl). He says, “Oh, I see you have an Apple Watch. Did you know that I invest in Apple? It means that I am part of the reason your watch exists. You’re welcome.” The only appropriate response is, “Wow, so you must be an economics major. Do you do a lot of investing?” And the most important question: “How profitable are your investments?”