Ohhhh! How I love those Alpha Gams

If anybody went through Recruitment at Georgia, I can guarantee that you could finish the rest of that line....it's catchy, even if it's annoyingly so. What brings me to talk about our infamous walk-in song? Recruitment. It's that time of year again and little known fact about me: I love it.

I don't know if it's the excitement of being reunited with sisters after you've been separated from them all summer, the possibilities of a great knew pledge class, or just seeing all of your hard work come together...(and maybe just a little bit, the opportunity to judge openly knowing that it's justified...so wrong, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit I liked it) Whatever it is, I would look forward to it every year I was in undergrad and still now. Since I'm actually in the state of Georgia this year, classes haven't started for me, and my work schedule is super flexible, I decided I would go and help out this year. Oh, and the fact that our house is getting remodeled and we're rushing with half of a house, I was a little nosy to see how in the heck they're going to finagle all of those girls in a smaller space.

Alums have a "behind the scene" role when it comes to recruitment: We help set up and refill snacks and drinks for each new round, work with the score cards, update attendance of PNMs (potential new members) per round, or have the exciting job of holding trays for attendance cards to go on that the PNMs give at the start of each round and then collect their cups and napkins on the way out the door after the round is over. It might not be nearly as much fun as bouncing, clapping, singing, and talking to the rushees, but someone's gotta do it!

Feeling a bit nostalgic, I went through some pictures of years past. Most of the pictures are from Bid Day, but I guess that makes sense because why would I think to take a picture of dozens of girls doing endless hours of song practice in Nike short and t-shirts, late night ironing sessions in the foyer, or moving furniture and props all around to change the set up for each round? Exactly.

Sophomore Year

This is the year pretty much your whole pledge class moves into the house. It was all so new and exciting to be "on the other side" and for us to be together as roommates and sisters back together after our first summer apart. We were so wide-eyed about how things worked and spent every waking second together for almost 2 weeks straight...I might have been the only one, but I loved it. 

Junior Year

This year was a whole new ballgame. A lot of my close friends and I were on Exec and saw the months of planning that had gone into this one week in a new light. Especially since I was living with the VP of Recruitment, I really saw the nitty gritty. Kathleen did a flawless job (of course), but I know we all breathed a sigh of relief when it was finished with a gorgeous new pledge class!

Senior Year

This year was a year of "lasts" and our first "last" was Recruitment. Some girls were sentimental, others, well, not so much. It was my first year not living in the house for Recruitment and even if it was a little weird, it was kind of nice having a break from 50+ girls that all lived under one roof after the day was over. Our Pledge Class definitely had a little bit more fun during work week that year than other years too, I say it was well earned. 

This sentimental streak definitely makes me long for for just one week with all of us living in the same house again with nothing to worry about except classes. You can't go back, but I have enough memories form those 4 years to last a lifetime. And I owe it all to the girls that put in the hard work to recruit me and the rest of PC '05 and that's why I did and still do have a soft spot for Recruitment. The system works how it's supposed to and I know without a doubt that we all ended up on the Alpha Gam front porch in August of 2005 for a reason...and for that reason, I'm going to keep showing up on that porch for as long as I'm able.