Those of us who decided to go Greek will say it was the best decision we have ever made. However, sometimes Greek life can be a bit tiring. We have to get our community service hours, raise money for philanthropies and stay up late studying so we can avoid going to standards and facing the wrath of the academics chair.
In all of those things, there is something to enjoy. Homecoming is a national holiday for any fraternity guy or sorority girl. Date party is the highlight of any sorority girl's fall semester, but a fraternity's formal is what makes the year for both guys and girls. However, a year in Greek life has the Greeks in some ups and some downs.
1. The Weeks Before School!
This is when all the fraternities and sororities flock back to their homes on fraternity row to prepare for school. When you get a bunch of college students in one place who haven't seen each other the entire summer, that only means one thing.
2. Recruitment Starts....
If you ever want to see a sorority girl diminish any sort of panhellenic relations and go from zero to Satan in five seconds, just wait for sorority recruitment to start. Sorority recruitment typically takes place right before school or within the first couple weeks of school. The girls are locked in their ivory towers on the row and cannot go out until the day after bid day. They want to recruit the best for their chapter, and it turns into a cutthroat first couple weeks of school.
Fraternities have it more relaxed. They just hang out in their front yard, grill out, and maybe have the game on in the house, just getting to know the potential pledges that find themselves walking clueless down fraternity row.
Fraternity Recruitment:
Sorority Recruitment:
3. Bid Day!
Bid day is something that is more important for sororities than it is the fraternities, but it is something that effects all of Greek Life. If you see a girl running across campus, looking a sleep deprived and cracked out on coffee in a tutu, then you know it is Bid Day. Give her two days to catch up on sleep before you talk to her, she is going to be what some personal friends of mine call "bid day blacked." This is when the sorority girl is so exhausted from recruitment week that when bid day comes around, they have no clue what is going on and just start acting slap happy from the random girls running toward them yelling "I FOUND MY HOME." However, this means that the girls are unlocked from their ivory towers and can come back out to play.
4. Homecoming!
After the girls have destroyed the city with their pent up emotions of wanting to straight up rage their faces off, everyone takes a huge chill pill in order to emotionally and physically prepare for one of the greatest national holidays of any college student... Homecoming. The day is filled with bad decisions, beer bongs, and school spirit. This national holiday usually takes up the whole month of October due to different schools have different homecoming dates. The alumni of sororities and fraternities return to their alma mater to remind the current students who the HBICs truly are.
Everyone:
5. Campus-wide Philanthropy!
This phase could be interchangeable for the spring semester or fall semester. At my school, we have a campus-wide philanthropy in the fall. Besides sorority recruitment, this is the most cutthroat season of all. You find out who you get paired with, and then that is your squad for the next five weeks. You sleep, eat, breathe your team.
6. Christmas Break!
The semester is winding down. The pledges/new members have been initiated and joined a brotherhood/sisterhood that lasts a lifetime. It's time for people to retreat home for a month and be reminded of why they hate their hometowns so much. This is also a time where the time of day becomes irrelevant, because you will sleep at any point of the day.
7. First Week of Spring Classes!
It's syllabus week once again. People have been sent to standards and people have ended up on their first (or third) semester of academic probation. Unless you attend an SEC school, this means you cannot go to date party or do anything fun, really. But it is syllabus week, and we all start with straight As at the beginning of the semester.
8. St. Patrick's Day!
This is the biggest holiday of the spring semester, because literally everyone celebrates. This is about the time fraternities and sororities have stopped caring about anything, because spring break is usually the week after, and all they are thinking about is Cancun and green beer.
9. SPRING BREAK!
Well, the time has finally come. Boarding passes have been printed and bags are packed. Spring break, here we come. Everyone typically heads to some Mexican Resort in Cancun, takes a cruise through the Bahamas, or ends up passed out on the beach in Daytona. PCB will forever RIP, since they passed laws that prohibit anything fun from happening on the beach. Typically, spring break is the college version of Vegas. "What happens on spring break, stays with spring break."
10. The G Word... Graduation!
This is the worst realization for any frat start or sorority queen. You realize that your times spent pre-gaming date parties at Sigma Chi, wandering into Theta Chi lost and confused, throwing up in PIKE's courtyard, ending up with a random person in your bed, stealing the composite from FIJI, and getting kicked out of Alpha Phi date party for being too drunk have come to an end. You'll never get another spring break making bad decisions with your friends on the beach, throwing what you know at every landmark, mountain range or tourist attraction is now pointless, and using your money from mom and dad to buy kegs for Sh*tshow Saturdays will no longer be acceptable. We all start jobs where we don't get to experience another weekend like we did in college. The seniors have gone alum and the juniors are now the people in charge. It's the final and worst phase of Greek life. It's the so long, farewell to you, my friend type of phase.
