Psi Psi. Sigh...

Monday, August 25, 2008
Today was such a long day! Jenn and I met with all of the members of Psi Psi to talk about how they felt about their membership in ASA and their views of the chapter. It was really nice getting to meet with all of the women and I really like them all a lot! They have 9 girl in the chapter (one more than I originally thought) and they are all strong, dedicated members that I think will make this chapter amazing! I’m so excited!

After we had all of our meetings today, the girls called invited me to go out to ice cream with them. One of the girls is going to school on a different campus (same school, just different campus) so she’s not around much during the week, so there’s 8 girls who are normally around. They said they all wanted to just hang out with me and get to know me more, so we went and sat at McDonalds for like an hour. I found out that they all wanted to hang out with me this weekend, but every time they called Betsy to see if I was available to go to dinner with them or something, Betsy would tell them I was already busy without even asking me if I was interested. I would have loved to have gotten to know the girls before my first big meeting with them; it would have made the whole thing less awkward for them and for me. I really do like this chapter a lot. All of the girls are super sweet and fun. They have all offered to let me come and stay with them if I don’t want to stay with Betsy for the rest of my visit and for when I come and visit next time. I don’t want to hurt Betsy’s feelings this time so I think I’m just going to go ahead and stay here the rest of this visit, but next time I’d definitely like to stay with one of the chapter girls! They also invited me to come back and visit them in December (not as an LC, but just as a sister) because Natchitoches is apparently gorgeous in the winter and there’s also some party that they want me to go to. Of course I think that would be awesome and I would love to go, but I’m not sure if it’s a good idea. We figured out it’s only like a 7 hour drive from Austin, but I worry about blurring the line between me being their friend and me being their superior. Superior sounds kind of weird, but I guess that’s kind of what I am. There’s probably a better word for it, but that works for now.

Now that I’m actually visiting a chapter, I really am excited about this job! I was excited before but I was also nervous because I didn’t know how it was going to go and if I’d be good at it, etc. So far, so good! I am struggling with the fact that I don’t have access to the internet whenever I need it (I haven’t had it since 2:00 today and won’t have it until who know when tomorrow. I hope 1:30, but it might not be until… well I might not get to at all, which will suck because I have some emails I have to send with attachments so I can’t use my iPhone. Ugh). Exciting news: Nicole extended 6 bids to girls at Clayton State yesterday and today and all 6 women accepted! Yay! Apparently she also got in a car accident today (just a fender bender and the other women got mad and drove off, so nothing too bad). There was a close call in the car I was in today, and because it was raining I got kind of a flash back of “the wreck” and almost lost my marbles. It was really scary.

One of the things that I got to do today with the chapter was go to a welcome week pool party. It was hosted by the Greeks so we all went in either swim suits or letters. When we got there I noticed there was a girl who looked like a stereotypical sorority girl. She was skinny, blonde hair, wearing this cute little swim suit cover up, wedges and lots of making including bright pink lipstick. I kind of laughed to myself when I saw her and though of how that’s what I used to picture when I though of sorority girls. As the pool party went on I started noticing more and more girls that looked like this and they were all hanging out together. Each one that I noticed looked more ridiculous than the girl before her and I couldn’t help but think how glad I am that none of the girls in the chapter here look like that. None of them struck me as particularly pretty. They were all trying way too hard to fit the mold of what they thought I pretty girl should be, and they looked so unnatural doing it. I talked to a couple of the girls in our chapter and they said that those are the Sigma girls (Sigma Sigma Sigma) and they’re required to look like that. Apparently (and I’m sure this is exaggerated some), they only accept skinny girls and the only exception they’ve made to that rule is for a legacy, and since she’s joined she’s lost like 20 lbs. I guess if the girl isn’t pretty or skinny enough then she’s not allowed to wear her letters on campus. I think this is ridiculous and I didn’t believe the first girl that told me this, but then another chapter member told me the same thing. I couldn’t believe I was hearing that people really act like this. I really wanted to take a picture of some of these girls with my phone but I thought that might look weird to whoever was standing behind me. They really looked like ugly, plastic Barbie dolls. There was only 4 or 5 of them at the pool party and, thankfully, none of the freshman looked like that. I wonder if they really think that their look appeal to people. I wonder if there were girls at the pool party who saw them and though “I want to be like that!” There were lots of pretty girls at the pool party and the girls that I thought we the prettiest were the ones that weren’t trying that hard; girls that didn’t look like they had caked on a pound of makeup before heading out to lay by the pool. I can’t wait to see what these Sigma girls look like during recruitment.