My Last Recruitment: Reflecting on the Past Four Years in Greek Life

Much like my college experience as a whole, my experience in Greek Life at Millikin has kind of been a roller coaster. I was one of the lucky ones, as I got a whole year with a normal Greek Life. No masks at recruitment or throughout the houses, formals and informals where you could bring anyone as a date, not just Millikin students, and events that don’t require meeting the many, many Covid-19 safety guidelines.

Now as I approach my last recruitment at Millikin, I am reminded of how lucky I am to have both my in-person and virtual experiences with Greek Life. 

As a freshman pre-Covid, I was able to see how recruitment, bid day, and the new member process, as well as Greek Life as a whole, are traditionally done. I was able to experience the history, rituals, and events as they were meant to be: in-person and maskless. 

Although I didn’t know it then, this was preparing me for my senior year, as I am a part of the only class who knows what Greek Life pre-Covid looked like. It is now my duty to share my knowledge that I learned just a few years ago to those who were robbed of those opportunities, in hopes of eventually returning to that normalcy we once had. 

My pre-Covid experience also taught me the importance of stability, tradition, and leadership. While sometimes changing things up is necessary or positive, Covid showed me that too much change can have lasting consequences.

Like I previously mentioned, I am in the last class that was in college before Covid. This means that the two classes in Greek Life below me, don’t have the full grasp of what it means to be in a sorority or fraternity. While we can do our best to be leaders for them, they lack the foundation that I was given as a new member my freshman year.

Never again will I take the stability of a pandemic-less world, college, and Greek Life for granted.

Just as I am grateful for the in-person, I am also grateful for what I learned through Greek Life during Covid-19 and while hosting events virtually or socially distant.

I have learned the importance of conversation. This time last year, we were preparing for virtual recruitment, which looked entirely different from what I was used to. The one thing however that didn’t change, was the opportunity to get to know new people.

On the last night of virtual recruitment I had made such a strong bond with a potential new member (PNM), to the point that we both left the Zoom crying (good, passionate tears of course). Despite the lack of a physical or in-person connection, that bond was still able to be formed.

If anything, virtual recruitment better equipped me for where I am now as well. I am a strong believer that if you can make a meaningful connection with someone on Zoom, you can make a meaningful connection with anyone anywhere.

These meaningful connections are what have made my time in Millikin Greek Life so worthwhile. My best friends, my leadership opportunities, even my current job, have all been brought to me by and through the relationships I have made being a member of Tri Delta.

This is why, as recruitment week begins, I feel overwhelming joy that I am able to share my passion, my experiences, and my knowledge for Greek Life to the active members below me and to the PNMS I have the privilege of getting to know. Greek Life has truly been an adventure and family I never knew I needed, but I am eternally grateful for.