As a Freshman, I prepared to go through Primary Sorority Recruitment. I heard sorority women from other chapters, universities and states echo about their Greek experience:
“You’ll find a better version of yourself through your sorority!”
“Senior year, you won’t even recognize yourself now.”
“College and recruitment are where you’ll find yourself and your people.”
I was an unsure and self-conscious eighteen-year-old coming to Arkansas State University, and at the time, I had no idea what I was seeking in a sisterhood. I knew that I wanted the experience of community and girls to help me grow, but in specific terms, I had no vision of what that would look like. I had anticipated that the sorority experience would bring me friends in some capacity, women to share the college experience with, but I never anticipated the genuine community and fellowship that would come with my new member experience.
Attending a mid-sized school in a southern state, I wasn’t unfamiliar with the fact that most of the women I sat beside in my first few chapter meetings were girls who had gone to church or high school together. Meanwhile, I had come in from a school about an hour away from Jonesboro and knew that to enrich my chapter experience, I would have to plug myself into new things. My first entry to this was attending a chapter Bible Study.
Our new member educator, Karoline Yeakley, now a proud alumnus of our chapter who works within one of our prominent campus ministries discipling other Greek women, decided to start a chapter Bible study for the first time. Her testimony of finding Christ through the women of Zeta, who supported her during a tumultuous Freshman year experience, pushed her to create a space for other girls in our house. As I entered my own new member period, I remember feeling so scared to make the wrong move in a room full of girls that I looked up to but who didn’t know me fully yet.
All it took was one invitation to a Monday night meeting at 6:30 pm in our house’s living room for me to understand what an opportunity joining this sisterhood was to make something better of myself, through the company I kept in my sorority. What pulled me into understanding the impact my chapter would have on me was the sense of being welcomed. As an unsure woman of faith, this sense of fellowship was what overwhelmed me during our meetings more than anything. Our meetings brought me closer to girls in my pledge class and even older girls in my chapter. It gave us a space to talk about our days, offer advice and just be a shoulder to cry on for one another. What I took away from these times together wasn’t just a renewed faithfulness, but a source of validation that in the sorority experience, I could find not just the friendships I was initially looking for, but also women who would fill gaps in my life that I didn’t even know I had.
