Sorority recruitment: you hear positive opinions and negative opinions about the process by which girls choose what sisterhood they want to join. Personally, I have both good memories and bad memories about recruitment, but even the bad memories were good because they were learning moments for me. Personally, I think all girls that go to colleges that offer Greek life should at least consider recruitment because recruitment teaches girls a lot of great life lessons. Here are just some of the things that recruitment taught me:

1. You meet new people.

While freshman orientation is a great way to meet new people, I met my closest friends during recruitment. Usually your recruitment group consists of the girls in your dorm or residential community, so you’ll be running into them a lot anyway. At the beginning of the week, the only girl I knew in my recruitment group was my roommate, but by the end of the week, I had grown close to many of the girls in my group because we had spent our evenings together, talking about our favorite chapters, which ones cut us, and bonded over the stress that recruitment brings. If I hadn’t gone through recruitment, I may have never had gotten to know these girls as well as I did.

2. You learn how to talk to complete strangers.

Recruitment is mostly conversing with members of each chapter. You aren’t going to know every member of every chapter, so when you walk into the door of a chapter, odds are a complete stranger is going to be there to greet you. You have to introduce yourself, tell the girl who you are, and what you can bring to the chapter. This setup not only allows you to show the members your personality and values, it also allows you to practice talking to complete strangers in a small amount of time, much like job interviews that you’ll have to do for internships or once you graduate college and join the real world.

3. You can get all of your related questions answered.

Sure, your orientation leaders and advisor may have said that they are always around to answer your questions, but in recruitment you get a different type of answers to questions: what teachers you should take, the best places to eat on campus, even how to get the hot water to work in your dorm shower (yes, my roommate actually had that conversation with a girl). Recruitment can be a great resource to any questions or concerns that you may have going into college.

4. You learn how to keep your composure in stressful situations.

Whether it’s reading your schedule wrong and showing up at the wrong house for a party or your makeup melting off your face in the 100 degree August heat, you have to act completely composed during recruitment. You don’t want houses thinking you’re a nervous wreck (even if you are)! So recruitment is great practice for how to keep your calm even when everything is going wrong.

5. And awkward situations.

Have you ever had a crowd of girls crammed into a door frame scream-singing a chant about their home to you? Sounds weird, right? Well, it’s just another part of recruitment, and you have to act like it is a totally normal, everyday kind of routine, even if it is the weirdest thing you have ever experienced. Whether it’s remaining calm during a door stack, or telling a girl who is clearly in love with their chapter that you don’t have the same feeling towards the chapter, there are some awkward scenarios that you have to completely act normal about during recruitment, and these can prepare you for similar awkward situations in your future career or just life in general.

6. You learn how to handle rejection.

Unless you’re one of the lucky few, you’ll probably get cut from at least one of your favorite houses during recruitment. For many girls, being cut from a chapter could be the first experience of rejection. Thankfully, there are so many other girls that go through the same process with you, so recruitment is a great way to accept and handle rejection, especially when there is a whole group of people that feel the same way.

7. You learn how to make decisions.

I’m a very indecisive person, so the first round of recruitment was so hard for me. I had great conversations at almost every house, so it took me some time and a lot of hard thought to decide which houses to cut. This same feeling happened to most of the girls in my recruitment group at some time during the week; some girls were even brought to tears because they just couldn’t make a decision. But eventually they had to decide, and they ended up at their home. When there are so many great chapters, it can be hard to really decide which sisterhood you want to be a part of or maybe even if you want to join a chapter at all. But you have to eventually make a decision and decide what is personally the right choice for you.

So if you’re a senior, or even a college freshman who was iffy about recruitment last year, I strongly recommend participating in recruitment because what you learn may actually surprise you.