Pledging Anxiety

My first GBM and pledge meeting were tonight; it was the first time our entire 82-person pledge class was put together in the same room, and just being part of such a massive mob of people was... a bit overwhelming, to say the least. I have never seen a lecture hall so packed before.

The GBM started at 6 pm and I didn't get back to my dorm until around 10:30 pm - we spent over four hours at the two meetings tonight, so when I told my roommates that I was "exhausted" when I got back to the dorm, I meant it.

Even though the GBM was pretty long (it lasted about two hours), it was also quite entertaining. Membership came up with this crazy family competition, where a three-person team representing each family raced each other to see which family could finish an entire loaf of wheat bread and a huge bottle of orange Gatorade first. For some reason, watching people gorge themselves in eating competitions is always grossly entertaining.

At the pledge meeting, we were bombarded by information about the fraternity and our PT taught us the "Toast Song." Each of us also had to go up in front of the packed lecture hall and introduce ourselves by making up a short rap:

Hi, my name is Karen.
I don't eat meat,
and I have size seven-and-a-half feet.

(Super lame, I know.)

We also got more information about our camping retreat coming up this weekend. I still need to get my hands on a sleeping bag/flashlight and prepare myself for spending three days and two nights out in an "undisclosed location" in the woods with eighty-two pledge "brothers"... WITH NO SHOWERS.

When the PT said "no showers," all the people in the front of the room burst into uncontrollable laughter because all 82 jaws dropped and 164 saucer-sized eyeballs were staring back at them.

There were some ha-ha moments and most people seemed reasonably friendly, but honestly, I have not been feeling the excitement or "love" of the fraternity yet. Every active I talked to raved about how awesome pledge retreat was for them and how they got to know their entire pledge classes over that one weekend, but I still have some doubts and reservations about what's going to change after our retreat this weekend.

Right now, I don't feel particularly connected to anybody besides the two semi-friends I kind of "know" from high school who are pledging with me; remember when I said I felt lonely in my dorm despite the constant presence of my two non-speaking roommates? Well, multiply that feeling by about forty, and you would get a pretty accurate picture of how I felt sitting with my pledge class tonight.

I admit that the loneliness was partially due to my lack of effort to strike up conversations with the people around me, but by the time the GBM was over, I felt completely drained of energy and was not in a small-talk initiating kind of mood. Stepping outside of my "comfort zone" will definitely be a challenge for me during this pledging process (especially since we will have to be interviewing seventy-ish strangers in addition to our entire pledge class).

It totally didn't help that I was feeling particularly self-conscious and a little light-headed from dehydration tonight. Note to self: bring Nalgene and LIP BALM to future meetings.

Not only is my pledge class huge, but the composition of my class also worries me a little; at installations, I noticed quite a few other people from my House who were also there to become official pledges. Since my roommate and I went around and kind of "met" most of them during the first few weeks of college and then literally disappeared from the House social scene afterwards, seeing all of these strangers-but-not-really again was awkward and will undoubtedly lead to some awkward conversations in the near future.

Interacting with one particular stranger-but-not-really I spotted there (who also spotted me) will be especially awkward and is definitely not something I am looking forward to doing. During welcome week, my roommate and I met him and his friend while we were up chatting and doing laundry for the first time on our own late one night and had a pretty good conversation with them.

A few days later, we saw him at a House meeting and found out that he had forgotten our names. We were both more than a little offended because it wasn't like we had just met in passing or something - we had spent a lot of time chatting on the couches.

After that incident, awkwardness tinged every subsequent encounter and we eventually stopped talking to each other.

I think we're working on ignoring each other now.

Having all these other House people I have weird, not-really-nonexistent relationships with in my pledge class definitely makes stepping outside of my "comfort zone" a little harder.

With all that said, I have only been a pledge for less than a week, so maybe the ambivalence and overwhelming-panicky feeling of aloneness are only natural parts of the transitional period.

I guess we'll see soon enough if I have what it takes to become a "brother*."

* Just a side note, but the fact that "brother" is the term used to described all active members of the "fraternity" (another sexist word that I have a problem with), even though about two-thirds of the members (in our chapter at least) are female, really irks the feminist in me. We need more non-sexist words in the English language!!