Truth Talk: Joining a Sorority

Hey friends! Today, I felt like sitting down and writing about how I ended up in a sorority. I think the stories like mine are really important in the grand scheme of Greek life, because a lot of people like me don’t ever join for thinking that they don’t belong. That’s what I thought, too. But that’s why I want to shed some light on my experience. Storytelling is a powerful tool for empathy and for change, and with both of those things in mind, I want to talk about this really vital piece of the puzzle that is my college experience.

In order to explain the whole story, we’re going to need to take it back a bit…to the summer of 2017, when I first moved to college.

I was on vacation in Oregon with my dad’s whole side of the family — aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents included. One afternoon, I was chatting with one of my older cousins, who had just graduated from college. She had been in a sorority at her university and loved it, and she wanted to know if I was rushing, too.

I pretty much laughed it off when she asked me, thinking that she couldn’t be serious. Me? A sorority? Not. A. Chance. You couldn’t pay me to join an organization where everyone clapped along as they sang annoyingly energetic songs from inside their big fancy house on Greek Row. In my opinion, Greek life was for the self-absorbed, party-crazy girls who had belonged to the “it-crowd” in high school. And of those three criteria, I fit zero.

This is 20.

As of now, I am no longer a teenager.

I have been on the planet for two full decades. Weird!

….. ….. …..

Hello again, friends! I hope your first two-ish weeks of this year have been treating you well. I’ve got lots of good content planned for the coming weeks, and I hope you are as excited as I am for 2019! But, on an unrelated note, I just wanted to pop in today to announce to the world that I have made it to 20 years old!

Now, I’m not making this announcement in hopes that I’ll get a bunch of “Happy Birthday” comments on this post (besides, my birthday was a week ago already), but because I want to take a moment or two to reflect on who I have been up until this point and who I would like to be going forward. After all, 20 is a big number! Honestly, I really like the sound of it.

La Parisienne, No. 4: Au Revoir

Well, folks, the adventure has come to a close. I’ve been back home in California for one month. What an adventure it was.

There is so much to say that I almost don’t know what to say.

I guess I’ll begin by talking about some of my favorite things about Paris:

La Parisienne, No. 1: Travel Troubles

I did it. I made it to Paris.

Which, given the last 24 hours of my life, is quite a feat.

Here’s the rundown:

After a LOT of waiting in the San Francisco airport, I finally got on my flight. Frazzled and overwhelmed by the fact that in an American airport all the announcements are still  in French, I forgot that there are three rows of seats on such big international planes, and I began walking down the wrong side of the plane with no way to cross over to the other side where I was sitting. So I had to inchworm my way through an empty middle row and ask nicely to cut in front of somebody in the other line.

Wow. I literally could not even get myself on the correct side of the plane. Can you say “tourist?” I could practically feel the other passengers’ eyes rolling at me.

Truth Talk: Being a Christian at a Large Public University

Alright. Truth talk.

Staying strong in your faith in college is hard. Staying strong in your faith at a large, public college is harder. Staying strong in your faith at a large, public college known for its reputation as a party school is, as you can imagine, a bit of a challenge. I’m not going to lie, it is really frickin’ hard sometimes.

Now, I’m not off in skimpy clothes raging every weekend. Or any weekend, actually. And because I’m not, it’s easy to feel like I stick out like a sore thumb here. It is far too easy to fall into the trap of believing that being different makes me weird.

What Moving to College Was Really Like

I have been at college for seven weeks.

I would like to tell you that so far, they have been the best seven weeks of my life, but that just wouldn’t be true. In fact, they have been stressful, terrifying, exhausting, overwhelming, confusing, and incredibly difficult.

When the first of my friends left for school in early August, I watched them flourish. Constant Instagram posts and Snapchat stories displayed countless fun activities, tons of great friends (which they were making so quickly), and a bubbly “I love life” attitude. Naturally, I expected the same thing when I left for college.