this picture is my official sorority picture from 2005. i look so young and wholesome. precious. i remember waking up fifteen minutes before i had to get it taken. i barely brushed my hair, threw on mascara, a black shirt and ran down the campus green with my girlfriends to be photographed. somehow i managed to look fairly resplendent and perhaps everything was at that point. but things were certainly about to be shaken up only a few days after this was taken.
i pledged the spring of my freshman year. and i loved it. i loved all of my new friends, i loved the history and traditions, the parties, having a house and a house-mom, mingling with fraternity boys, wearing my flip-flops with our letters on them around campus. i even enjoyed the weekly meetings and always having to wear my pledge pin. truly everything. it was just the college experience i was looking for.
and then towards the end of the semester, rather swiftly, the sorority was shut down by the national headquarters. after being on our campus for over one hundred and twenty years, we got the boot. i cried for days afterward. i wept in my dorm room, i sniffled through my classes. i remember waiting for the campus bus during a downpour (in pink rain boots) as tears streamed down my face. a kindhearted girl came up to me and put her umbrella over my head until the bus came. it was out of a movie, it was so sweetly pitiful.
but then the sun came out and i realized that i had all of these new friends. and they were wonderful and great and they didn't go anywhere. and i even lived with a whole bunch of them my junior and senior year. and i still even live with one (hi emily)!
college continued on. my interests expanded and i challenged myself to become immersed in new adventures. i joined a feminist group on campus and i volunteered nine hours every week at the homeless shelter in burlington babysitting the sweet, sweet children. i'm not sure if i'd have these same experiences had i been in the sorority. i'm not sure i'd have the time to juggle everything. or even the desire or need to branch out.
it's amusing to think of what my college experience would have been like had the sorority remained on campus. but i will never know. what i do know is that my experience at vermont still turned out to be wonderful. it was one of the first times i realized that life can change in the most unexpected of ways, but never without reason or purpose. who even knows if i would have the wonderful job that i do now, as there were so many twists and turns that led me here? it is all just part of the fun and i'm thankful.
