Okay, okay: you're probably tired of reading about Greek Life by now, because it seems like everyone and their sister has written or shared an article about it--why they joined, why they didn't join, how awful the fraternity house next to them is (actually, maybe that one was a movie)...

Point is, I get it. We Greeks can be kinda vocal when we want to be.

But this is something I want you all to know.

One of my sorority sisters has written a great article talking about the perpetual stigmas of Greek Life and how everyone involved with it is always refuting them. There are a bunch of articles out there about how awesome joining Greek Life is, including this one written by another woman from a different sorority on my campus. And there's so much more to it than just parties and smiling for pictures.

Though I'll admit, we do seem to do the picture thing a lot.

I wrote an article before about why I joined my sorority. When I joined, I went through "informal recruitment," which happens in the winter semester. Anyone interested in joining a sorority can check out as many or as few of the sororities on campus as she wishes, and it's a lot more of a laid-back feeling than the formal recruitment in the fall.

That's what I was told, anyway.

I just got to experience formal recruitment firsthand, though I was "on the other side of the badge" this time, and you know what?

Everything everyone told me was absolutely true.

I mentioned in my first article that we all put a lot of work into our sorority. We built our own benches and hand-painted our own letters for this year's recruitment.

Which turned out pretty darn amazing, by the way.

But that was just the tip of the iceberg. Our preparation started at the end of the preceding semester, when our recruitment theme--what we'd be dressing like and how we'd be designing our room--was announced. Weeks before anyone walked through our doors--and before most of us had any ideas about how it was all going to come together--we took some promo photos and filmed our recruitment video. We got really creative with some of these pictures, too. One of our sisters found some graffiti in an alley that was very awesome:

See, it's cool because that's the symbol we make with our hands to signify that we belong to our sorority. And it was just there, ready to be photographed!

We also spotted an old chair in the alleyway we were using for this photo shoot. One sister decided to test its stability.

This was taken shortly before the chair started tipping and she almost face-planted. Don't worry, she caught herself, and she was okay.

We then found another piece of graffiti that we decided to take advantage of, and realized that if we supported one another, we could actually utilize that chair:

We had a whole sisterhood moment with the support thing. That chair was surprisingly good at helping us bond with one another that day. But I think one of the other (numerous) reasons we bonded was because the person we had contacted to film the video was something like three hours late.

And it was a very. hot. day.

But they did eventually get there and we did eventually get our video (which made most of us cry happy, emotional, sisterly tears when we saw it).

When we first started filming that video and we were told to talk, we said stuff like "I don't know what to say!" and "Just mouth 'watermelon,' no one will know what you're saying!" But eventually we actually started talking about real stuff: family, school, work. We looked like we were just hanging out, sure, but we were really enjoying each other's company. I'll never forget it.

Moving further down the iceberg a bit, we had a recruitment retreat a few weeks later, in August. This retreat began bright and early with an outfit check: yes, we had to have our recruitment garb ready to go that long before we were actually going to need it (recruitment happens toward the end of September, for those of you who haven't seen my dozens of Facebook posts about it). That's how prepared we had to be. Good thing several of us were Girl Scouts. We did a lot of things at that retreat, most of which I'm probably not allowed to actually tell you because we had a professional speaker come in and inspire us to do them, but it lasted all day long, and not only did it get us extremely fired up for recruitment, it brought us all closer together.

We also got to hit things. And by "things" I mean a pinata full of candy.

One of our sisters may have beheaded the pinata. The carnage was too graphic to show you, but I can provide you this image. She looks so proud. It did make us all laugh though.

Good thing, too, because little did I know, I was going to need the energy I walked away with that day.

The week of actual formal recruitment reminded me more of Tech Week in theater than anything else, and if you've ever been through that, you know why it's affectionately referred to by players the world over as "Hell Week." It was insane. Every day, those of us who could be there came in three to four hours before rounds were set to begin to set up the room. Often, we did this in yoga pants. With our shoes off (the one difference from theater: too many screws loose on the stage to risk taking your shoes off there. Interpret that however you will). We dashed around the room, moving displays and setting up stands, all in various stages of preparedness for the evening: some of us would be in full makeup, but still in our everyday shirts and shorts. Some of us would have on a solid layer of foundation and maybe some blush, but only have our eye shadow partially finished, and be sporting only half of our "costume" for the evening (usually the pants so we wouldn't ruin our shirts hauling something in from someone's car). We'd even had a professional makeup artist come in and give us a makeup tutorial, but despite that, we still had the more makeup-savvy sisters of the group do makeup for those of us with less confident hands.

Until about a year ago, I didn't even know what "bronzer" was. True story. So you can probably guess whether or not I did my own makeup.

As much effort as we put into the rooms--and ourselves--and as exhausted as we were, we always made sure there was good energy in the room, starting with us. This meant any number of things could happen, including--but not limited to--sporadic dance parties to the tunes of a playlist we all contributed songs to...

The reason this picture is blurry? Dancing! (I know it looks like a lot of us were just standing, but this is actually us just starting to get hyped. Promise. Everyone's having too much fun to take pictures when we really get going.)

Selfies and photos in between rounds...

And late-night outings to our local Coney Island.

What you don't see here is that the sister on the left is asking the sister on the right to do a "Lady and the Tramp" with her. With cake. And the one on the right is replying with a hard "no." It was hilarious.

One of the things we did that was much more of a low-key energy-giver was this: we were asked to imagine our lives without our sorority. Maybe for some of us, that was a difficult or near-impossible task. For me, it was easy, because it wasn't that long ago that I was a stranger to almost every single one of the people there. I went to class, I went home, and that was it. I didn't have many friends, and I went back and forth between liking school and just being kind of lukewarm about it. Had I graduated in that state, I would have been satisfied with my undergraduate experience, but it was really a pretty lonely time. When I was asked to imagine where I would be without my sorority, I knew exactly what my life would look like: my support network would be so much smaller, because I'd have far fewer friends than I have now. I would never have met the amazing women who inspire me to push myself to be more, to do more, every time I see them. I wouldn't have my Big Sister to be crazy with, to complain about class and boys and life with, or to freak out about our favorite shows with.

My life would be so much emptier without my sorority, and more than anything, that was what I knew I had to convey to every woman who walked through the doors to our recruitment room: that no matter how hard we work, no matter how many late nights and early mornings we devote to our sorority, it's all worth it, because we love our sorority, and we love each other. And hey, if the quality of the women who joined our sorority because of recruitment is any testament to how well we communicated that message, then I'd say we did an amazing job, because I'm proud to call each and every one of them--new members and active members alike--my sisters.