It’s that time of year. The Facebook cover photos have changed. The Greek keyboards have been downloaded. The date parties have started. Our five sororities have recruited their new members, and all these girls couldn’t be happier. But with so many of them having rushed and a few sororities hosting continual bidding, sometimes for the rest of us, it feels like everyone else went Greek.
Suddenly all your friends have 150 new sisters, and they’re canceling on your Netflix movie marathons to go to mixers. You’re left alone with your tea and fuzzy blankets, watching Molly Ringwald have more fun than you. It feels like you’ve been replaced with a tote bag and a couple of letters from a language you only know from your problem sets.
It really seems like you’re the only one who didn’t go Greek. Your Instagram has been overrun with pictures of smiling sorority squats, and every Snapchat story features selfies from some members-only party. Don’t worry. You’re not the only one who refrained from pledging. According to various unofficial sources (College Board, colleges.niche.com) that are probably only moderately reliable, only about 25-30 percent of women at Hopkins join sororities. But the girls who join sororities tend to be the most active on social media (according to my own observations), so it definitely feels like more.
If you’re feeling lonely, you can recognize your fellow non-sorority girls by their lack of a giggling entourage. They’ll be going about their lives as a normal person does, and they probably won’t be wearing an excessive amount of pink. That’s not to say sororities are bad or that all your newly recruited friends are abandoning you. They’ll still call you to come walk them home from a party, and they’ll still ask for your help with their chem labs, but you’ll have to learn to share your friends with all their new sisters.
Gasp. Sharing? What is this, kindergarten? You may not equate your best friends to building blocks, but the idea is the same. She’s going to have friends you don’t know, and she’s going to have fun without you, and your FOMO is going to be at an all-time high. And you’re just going to have to get used to that.
Think about all the fun things you can do, though, because you’re not in a sorority. First of all, you don’t need to dress well, ever. You’re not going to mixers, date parties or pancake brunches. No one is going to expect you to look good in pink, so you don’t even need to try. You never have to girl flirt. While your friends are off on sorority dates with a handful of underclassmen, pretending to have an interest in all aspects of their lives, you can be yourself and rejoice in your resting bitch face. A girl asks you how you are? You can scowl back without fear of retribution from your school-organized sisterhood.
You didn’t just join a cult. Okay, maybe that’s a little harsh. But they’ve got chants, they’ve got mandatory meetings and they’ve got fees. You don’t have to do any of that. Instead, you can spend that money on coffee or Spotify Premium or literally anything else. You have so much more time to join other clubs or finally sit down and read that book you brought from home. Or maybe you just have more time to procrastinate on your homework.
Really, you should be happy for your sorority-bound friends. Sure, you’ll get to see them less, but they’re happy. They won’t ignore you, they’ve just added another circle of friends. They get to dress up, go to parties and have fun on a Tuesday night, because that’s the only time the sorority could book the club. They’ll always be able to find a friend to eat with when you’re too busy, and all of you will benefit from the wisdom of their upper class sisters.
As an added bonus, suddenly their closets will be more open for your borrowing needs. They wear their letters nearly everyday, so you can grab that cute sweater, because they’ll be wearing it markedly less often. Even though you won’t get to hang out with your friends as much as you did first semester, they’re not going to abandon you. But be honest, you didn’t really like seeing them all the time, did you?
