Deciding to participate in formal recruitment freshman year was one of the most life-changing decisions I have made in my collegiate years. When I opened my bid, I knew that I would be changed forever. But, I never thought that it would be the walls of my chapter house that would shape me into the woman I have become.

This past year, I have been lucky enough to live with 27 other members of my pledge class. Living with this many women requires patience and a lot of it. We spend nearly all of our free time together, from meals to time at the library, to Bachelor Monday's, and everything in between. Quite frankly, being alone feels unnatural at this point.

Although being together all the time has become the new norm, it can be exhausting at times, and butting heads becomes inevitable. In my case, our fights are typically about three things: 1. Who's responsible for the mess in the kitchen? 2. Whose laundry has been sitting in the dryer for, literally, 5 consecutive days? And 3. Who has my [insert favorite article of clothing here]? Despite all of the petty drama, this year has hands down been the best year of college yet. I moved into the house unsure if agreeing to live in-house would be a decision I would come to regret. It took less than an hour for all of my uncertainty to subside and the realization that this would be the best thing I would ever do to set in.

Move out day is quickly approaching, and next year a new group of women will fill our spots in the house just as they do each year. When it comes down to it, it's not the house itself that defines a chapter, but rather, those that fill it. I once read, "We say that it's the memories and the people that make a home, not the things in it or the structure itself, yet when we're forced to leave a treasured home behind, it doesn't merely tug at the heartstrings -- it damn near severs them."

When I look back on college years, I won't remember which composite hung at the top of the front stairs, the several different house codes we've been through in the past year, or even the countless episodes of Kardashians that I have seen over and over again. What I will remember are all of the closet raids, the singalongs, the amount of times we've said, "We could have a reality show," the crafting, the meetings in the study room, the decision that the only cure for Sunday Scaries is to pile as many girls as possible into one room, the laughs, the tears and, most importantly, a bond unlike any other. This past year, I have lived with 27 other women. And in the past year, these 27 women have become my family.