Editor's Note: Through the Looking Glass is The Mirror's newest feature. We welcome submissions from all members of the community both past and present who wish to write about defining experiences, moments or relationships during their time at Dartmouth. Please submit articles of 800-1000 words to the.dartmouth@dartmouth.edu.
Freshman year is cleverly distracting. You get away with masking your homesickness and insecurities underneath layers of parties, info sessions and the minted newness of it all. By freshman spring, you know where all the buildings lie, but you're still not sure who your core friends are, although you seem to have made a lot of frat-to-Facebook friends.
Sophomore year brings the promise of new friends of the Hellenic kind, or so you've been told. You haven't made your mark here yet, but you hope that a few Greek letters can finally tether you to the social structure whose edges you flirted with all last year. A familiar Dartmouth trajectory.
I entered rush sophomore winter more than a little lost about who I was at Dartmouth. I think many women here do. During my fall off-term in New York, I had remotely rejoiced with my friends when they accepted bids at houses they loved, all the while secretly and painfully nervous for myself. I convinced myself that it was true that rush was a stressful process, but you got through it all right, even if you didn't know anyone involved.
I admit I went in having considered the stereotypes people like to play up, and I admit I wanted houses I had friends in. Everyone complains about how long girls' rush is, but the parties themselves weren't too bad. I had pleasant conversations; everybody seemed nice enough. After the first round, the apprehensions I had about sorority life didn't seem that relevant anymore. However, the process disintegrated for me pretty quickly after that, when I was dropped by every house I liked by pref night. I cried in my bed for a little bit, decided to drop out of rush and put away the teal satin dress I had bought especially for pref night.
Let me be clear: There's a difference between wanting to be unaffiliated and having it chosen for you. As a senior, Greek affiliation is more background than foreground to me, but at the time, I was heartbroken because I saw my rejection as a reflection of the person I was. I blamed myself, turning disappointment into self-criticism. Would they have liked me more if I were wittier, prettier, skinnier? What was wrong with me?
That winter was my worst term at Dartmouth. My friends were on off-terms, and I felt lonely and a little abandoned by the community that was supposed to feel like home. I went to the gym for two hours nearly every day. I watched an entire season of "Fringe" in a week. I had convinced myself that Greek life would help me feel more connected to the College, but instead I became acutely aware of every insecurity I had about being at Dartmouth not knowing what to study, my weak involvement in campus activities, my social awkwardness.
Then I made a decision. If I didn't have a Greek affiliation to help shape my identity here, I would need to carve out a niche on campus through a different activity. I threw myself into my work at The Dartmouth as a news reporter and took every story assignment I could, changing from a sporadic contributor to a dependable member of the sophomore staff. Sophomore summer can be a hard time to be unaffiliated, but between living off-campus with friends and working for the newspaper, I barely noticed.
When I became an editor at the end of junior fall, I wore that teal dress to the annual Changeover event announcing the new leadership with a unique sense of accomplishment.
A sizable portion of social life at Dartmouth is structured along Greek lines, and the honest truth is that affiliation gives you a significant advantage in navigating that environment. By junior winter, I had reached a point of social stasis. My awkwardness can unintentionally translate into seeming frigid or disinterested, so I wanted to challenge myself to forge new relationships. My spur of the moment decision to rush again that term in the hopes of finding a new community was one of the best choices I've made at Dartmouth. I approached the process the second time around with a truly open mind, confident in my role on campus and with an honest understanding of what I could and could not gain from being in a sorority. I was genuinely excited to be in any house. That optimism and having secured a sense of place at Dartmouth made all the difference.
I feel very lucky to have been so generously welcomed into a house of strong women. But our house is dynamic because of the individual personalities that comprise it, not the other way around. Sororities provide a great support network and can really push you outside of your comfort zone to make new friends.
Everyone's a little insecure. Being included in a social group makes you feel desired and happy. Membership can help bridge the uncertain transition from being a freshman when your only obligation is to enjoy everything, and class year is enough of an identifier to becoming an upperclassman, when you're summarized in campus dialogue by a handful of activities. You're lucky if you get an adjective thrown in there, in between the facetime-y nouns.
Editing The Dartmouth has been the defining activity of my Dartmouth experience. I worked really, really hard to earn that leadership role and fought even harder to see the job through to the best of my ability. More importantly, my trajectory at the paper was a process I had agency over.
Rush, on the other hand, is somewhat random and, at some houses, inherently undemocratic. Most importantly, it is a process beyond your control. Upperclassmen realize this, even though it's not immediately apparent as a sophomore filled with self-doubt. I would say the same for societies, which I imagine have evoked similar feelings for juniors this week.
I made the mistake of taking an impersonal process too personally. Whether or not you pledged a Greek house this year, or whether you even wanted to, the next two years will bring periods of self-evaluation so much more substantial than any conclusion you can draw from the outcome of rush. Senior me wishes sophomore me understood this. Greek life at Dartmouth can give you a lot of things, but it can't construct identity, passion or purpose. That's all on you.
