Rush is weird. Having gone through the recruitment process four times now — once as a rushee and three times as a sorority woman — I can knowingly say it does not get much better.
After navigating the recruitment process four times, I learned more about it and the minute details of how a social bureaucracy is formed. I learned more about my sorority sisters, both what to expect from them and how to react as a community when those expectations weren’t met. Most importantly, I learned more about myself.
By my fourth year, you could call me the Yoda of rush, but I had not always been so adept at the process.
Returning back to Charlottesville after Winter Break of my first year was difficult. As a historically and socially competent person, I found my first semester of college draining — I had never been forced to exert that much effort to make friends. I had not yet found my niche.
My confidence deflated and my level of self consciousness high, I dreaded the thought of “proving myself” to, what I expected to be, wolf packs of older, judgmental girls during my first rush experience. I spent days planning outfits, careful to find that balance between fashion-challenged and trying way too hard. I smothered my face in makeup and braved the cold for what seemed like the longest days of my life.
While I stood outside the door of my first house during Round Robbins, onlookers may have thought I was mid-seizure — though I could not tell whether my trembling was the product of the cold winter day or the panic that had completely consumed me. From the outside of that house on Rugby Road, rush seemed like a cruel process to me — eerily similar to how farmers grade cattle in the maze of modern livestock facilities.
But, aha! I was wrong. While it was painful to smile the entire day, and while I often heard my voice wander into an unnaturally sweet tone, I found that connecting with strangers was easier than I thought. For every 10 forced conversations, I had one genuine interaction.
When I walked into what later became my sorority house for the first time, I felt at ease. Though unaware that I would one day live in that house, I somehow sensed there was potential inside the walls. I remember talking to a stranger about Turkish bath houses and the creepy old men that populated them. Was this rush-appropriate conversation? Probably not, but it felt real, and for the first time all day, I had an honest laugh.
Fast-forward four years of college experience, and I haven’t changed much. I still cannot shotgun a beer properly, and I can never find a pair of matching socks in my dresser. After 22 years of walking this earth, I am by no means an adult, but I am happier to be myself because I found a niche of friends who accept my bizarre quirks.
My positive experiences as a sorority woman have helped me approach rush differently in subsequent years. From my perspective now, recruitment is simply the one time of year I spend all day in the house with some of my best friends.
Allison’s column runs biweekly Thursdays. She can be reached at a.lank@cavalierdaily.com.
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