When you go to a Big Ten school many things are considered normal; getting up at 4:00 AM to start drinking, wearing your sorority or fraternity letters to the gym and just about everywhere else you go, working hard and partying harder, being proud of your athletes, etc. I came to IU thinking these were all things I wanted to be a part of.
What I've learned since coming to college is that these things are not for everyone. Being required to be at a sorority house whenever you're told and having social obligations of going out every weekend at least once or twice, if not more, are not obligations I want to have. I realized being in a sorority is not for me. The thing that bothers me is how people in sororities don't realize that. I went to Florida over Spring Break and was at the pool, wearing a B-Town shirt, when a girl wearing her sorority letters comes up to me to ask if I go to IU. I tell her yes and among her first three questions is "Are you in a sorority?". Obviously I said no and the conversation ended with her inviting me to come party with her during Little 500. Many times if you tell a sorority girl you are not in one, they will give you an answer along the lines of "oh, I'm sorry to hear that". The possibility that you decided to drop, or even not rush at all - that you did not want to be in one, is rarely considered. There's a sense of entitlement gained from being in a sorority - that because they were selected to be given a bid based on looks, personality, whatever it is, they are better than you, when in reality, they could just have completely different interests and priorities than you. Non-Greeks are called GDI's for a reason - we are God Damn proud to be Independent.
The only disappointing part of being a GDI at a school such as IU, is that if you live in Northwest, social lives revolve around Greek life. This past weekend was Quals - a weekend for the Greeks to start drinking at 4 AM Saturday morning and keep it going until 4 AM Sunday, as if they really needed an excuse. Many of the other dorms and clubs at IU will have their own Little 5 bike teams, take for example, the Teter residence and the IU Nursing Club. Foster, McNutt and Briscoe, however, have probably never had their own Little 5 team, which means, if you live in any of these 3 buildings and are not in Greek life, Quals probably just means a quiet Saturday for you, which for me at least, makes you feel bad that you have no team to cheer on and no where to be. But that would mean not being true to yourself if Greek life is not for you. It's hard to sit back and watch the people you know having a great time being drunk all day and celebrating "Qualidays", but is there any solace is knowing you're not lying to yourself, trying to be someone you're not? What if you don't really know who you are or what you're not?
I saw myself being a sorority girl, going to tailgates and Little 5, wearing letters, throwing "what you know" up in the air at the beach over breaks, going to frats, and when I got here and as time progresses I realized that was never going to be me, but if I know that's not who I am why is it so hard to accept that's never who I'll be?
Probably because although it's not me, I'm still surrounded by it. My friends are in sororities, there's at least one person in each of my classes in a sorority if I had to guess, and my roommate is in one so when big-little week came it looked like a sorority threw up all over my room. What not going Greek taught me was that it was time to find myself and find where I did belong.
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