Like a lot of girls roughly my age, I grew up watching “Lizzie McGuire.” I will even drop whatever I’m doing to turn it on if I happen to see it pop up on my channel guide (this once resulted in a totally justified 2:00 a.m. homework break). I related to Lizzie quite a bit: I was kind of awkward in middle school—okay, all of school—I had a few close friends I treasured more than anything, and I’m still under the impression that had a camera crew followed us around they could’ve gotten a few pretty decent seasons of a TV show out of it. I even have a little brother named Matt—how perfect is that?

The age gap is a little different, but yeah, that was pretty accurate, at least when we were kids. Lizzie and I had one more very important similarity though:

My image of a “cheerleader type” in high school was kind of what Kate was to Lizzie, except maybe not in personality: slender, popular, athletic, and probably also blonde, or at least with manageable hair. I suppose at certain points I may have been walking the line between “not unnoticed” and “friendly acquaintances with people who run in many different circles,” but by no means was I ever “popular.” Although my weight wasn’t bad, I felt like a bloated walrus standing next to some of the girls on the pom or cheer teams, so “slender” and “athletic” were both out, and my hair was a disaster on a good day.

Fueled by some stereotypes I picked up throughout middle and high school, my image of who I thought a cheerleader was kind of morphed into who I thought a sorority girl was: again, slender, popular, maybe not necessarily so athletic, but gorgeous, and with spectacular hair. I was under the impression that a lot of cheerleaders would probably join sororities, and that as a member of not only several Honors Societies, but also Dungeons & Dragons groups and writing clubs, I’d go on to join the honors program somewhere, have my small group of nerdy friends, and quietly graduate with honors while the cheerleaders-turned-sorority-girls partied their nights away. Probably with the frat guys, who were probably involved in sports in some way in their high school days, because I thought that was how it usually worked.

Weirdly, though, when I got to university, things were different: I heard almost nothing about sororities or fraternities or anything, and they didn’t dominate the campus like I had been led to believe they would. Part of that could have been that mine was a commuter school, but even so, things were quiet on the Greek front. Though there wasn’t much to pay attention to, I didn’t pay much attention to it: I went on my merry way, quietly doing my honors thing, just as I thought I would.

Although I didn't make many connections, I found a friend in one of my writing classes. She was totally approachable, had the coolest red hair, and I could probably have swapped clothes with her if I’d ever been courageous enough to ask. I was shocked when she wore a sweatshirt with sorority letters to class one day: she was nothing like I’d expected someone in a sorority to be. I thought about that for a long time, because even though I didn’t consider myself prejudiced against people in sororities—at least not consciously—I figured there was a type of person who joined, a type of person they accepted, and I didn’t figure someone like my friend, as amazing as she was, would be that type of person.

I finally decided to ask her how she liked being in a sorority, though, and she responded very positively. She actually convinced me to check out her sorority at informal recruitment.

On top of never actually having considered joining a sorority, I had awful social anxiety, so my friend promised me she’d be there to introduce me to people and be my “safe person." This ultimately led to me actually showing up to an on-campus event for once. I found my friend when I got to the room and almost immediately the sorority’s president walked up to me and introduced herself.

She could probably sense my hesitation, but I found myself feeling much more comfortable as I looked around the room at the other people in my friend’s sorority: most of them weren’t the slender blondes I thought I’d be seeing. Actually, a lot of them had the same frame and proportions I did, including the president.

I learned that even though this was a social sorority, there was a lot more to it than just socializing or partying: there was a community service and grade point average requirement, and the focus of the sorority as a whole was to encourage women to aim higher in everything they did, including academics, which I supported wholeheartedly. I put my contact information down on a list of people to be considered for recruitment—which I never thought I would do—and as I walked home, I felt really good about it.

As I got to know the women of that sorority more, I realized just how different they all were from this stereotype that had been drilled into my head since I was a preteen: there were engineers, science majors, math majors, and more among them, and in all shapes and sizes. Some of them had been cheerleaders in high school, or had played sports, but a lot of them hadn’t. Even so, most now preferred a pajama-clad Disney movie marathon with friends—and obnoxiously belting out every song from every film—and I could definitely relate to that. In a few short months, these women changed everything I had ever thought about sororities, which was why I ultimately decided to join. I didn’t become a “sorority girl” though—no stereotype that I had ever held could describe who my sorority sisters were, who I was. I became a sorority woman, because that's what we are: we work hard, and it's something to be proud of.

We’ve done school supply drives, book drives, and food drives. We’ve made blankets, jumped into icy water to benefit the Special Olympics, made baked goods to raise money for kids who can’t afford their own school supplies, locked up our fellow students in a handmade “jail” for Parkinson’s, and so many other things that I could write an entire article just on those. Even more than that, though, we go to work: to get ready for recruitment this year, we built six benches and hand-painted our new letters for the season.

Of course, we had fun doing it…

But we got messy. We brought out power tools, screwdrivers, hammers, and several different kinds of wrenches. We strong-armed bench supports into place and lifted completed ones out of our work space. We got sweaty and dirty and covered in paint. But we rolled up our sleeves and got the job done, because we’re not sorority girls, we’re sorority women—

—and that’s so much better!