All over my Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook feeds, it has
been non-stop posts about sororities at my university going through recruitment
workshops, saying goodbye to recruitment counselors, and making cute videos in order to get prepared for one of the craziest weeks of the year. (There’s also a major flood of engagements and people having
babies, but that’s another day.)
But as I sit here in the “big girl world”, I can’t help but look back to those days of practicing chants, how to bump to my rotation
partner, and dying from the heat while still trying to look semi-decent. I
complained a lot about it at the time, but I began to think about how sorority
recruitment has helped transform me into the professional I’m becoming today.
And I’m obviously talking about other life skills besides
rocking a pair of pumps all day and working through the pain #LikeABoss.
Here’s how four years of sorority recruitment helped prepare
me for the “real world”:
You learn to hold a professional demeanor at all times.
Let’s be real: as much as you're excited for new
sisters, claiming littles, and having more people that’ll come get you, no
questions asked, at 2 A.M., recruitment takes a lot of time, hard work, and
communication. And there are days where you just don’t feel like going and
practicing your rotation groups for hours on end or competing with the houses
next door for loudest chants. Especially when it’s in the dead of summer and you’re sweating enough that you feel as if you just had an intense cross-fit workout, it is definitely the last thing you want to be doing. But once that first
party starts, you pull yourself together, stand straight in your perfectly
coordinated outfits, and become the best sorority woman those PNMs have ever
seen. Recruitment taught me to do this, to hold myself professionally and rock
it no matter how you're feeling. Talking to clients all day is like talking to New Members all day. You
can’t let them know you’re having a bad day, or tired, or stressed. Recruitment
taught me that there’s going to be days where you are worn out, but keeping your head high and staying professional is key to having success in whatever you’re trying to
accomplish.
You learn to look dang good at early hours in the morning.
As much as I didn’t understand at the time why
our Vice President of Membership wanted us “recruitment ready” on Work Week
days or why we had to be completely ready-to-go (makeup, hair, the works) about
four hours before a party that day even begun, I now value her for putting
me through the training of having to be up and going before 7 A.M. Thank you for
showing me that a good makeup routine can happen before the sun even begins
to shine or the coffee is brewed, and thank you for holding me to high
standards for how I present myself to others that I’m essentially trying to impress.
And obviously all the clothes we had to buy to match one another added to my
work-week wardrobe, so bonus points to you. Also, the investment in a nude pair
of heels as forever changed my life thanks you, VP of Membership and recruitment.
You learn to actually hold a conversation.
Forced or not, if you didn’t already have the capability before, you definitely will have it now. The ability to feel comfortable talking to people you don't know, while also making it a somewhat stimulating conversation, takes practice, and recruitment gives you that. Coming into a job where greeting people, making phone calls, and gaining relationships with clients is suppose to be second nature to you, I will always praise having conversation practice within my rotation groups while being forced to talk to a paper plate about what that plate did in high school. It may sound awful, but my clients today now will never know how awkward I was at conversation a few years ago.
Being you is enough.
I feel as if sorority life, mostly from
outsiders who don’t experience it for themselves, put this “fake” reputation on
all women affiliated. We’re viewed as conformists, molding ourselves in the
image that everyone associates with Greek women (which it's widely positive). Through my days of
recruitment, I had the opportunity to become a counselor, or a Pi Chi. Even
though it was one of the greatest and most prized moments of my college career, it
almost taught me this important lesson. Recruitment is, no lie, a time of
pressure. Pressure to look your best, pressure to make a good impression,
pressure to possibly be and act a certain way. And even though you “see “ it,
you never really get the full affect until you see it from a different point of
view and a new set of eyes. And let me tell, it’s scary. I remember my moments as a PMN, knowing
absolutely nothing about Greek life and constantly thinking that these women
were not going to like me. But to see girls going through the same thing, freaking
out about conversations, if they said the right thing or not, fretting about if
they made the right impression, it killed me to see that pressure build upon
them all. Recruitment taught me that there’s no one better than just being
yourself, and if someone has an issue with that, than those aren’t the people
you want to be calling your sisters (or your co-workers, for that matter). When it came time to
interview, I could sense when I was or wasn’t going to fit in with a company. But I’m not
going to try to conform to who some business wants me to be. I want to do
business and build relationships with individuals that accept me for the nerdy,
Chuck Bass-obsessed individual that I am. Being you is enough for whatever you
decide to do in life, and don’t let anyone else influence you otherwise.
____
____
Good luck to all the Greek women out there about to recruit amazing new
sisters into your sisterhood.
Just remember: Sore throat, blistered feet, all lead to great new sisters at the end of the week.
S/O to Epsilon Zeta, y'all have my heart.
Until next time,
*If you're in need for a cute big/lil gift for the upcoming year,
check out Kiss My Southern Sass.
You can use the discount code "LexxieBeckmeyer" at checkout!
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