Friday, August 21, 2020

Two short stories

Two short stories Ive never thought of myself as a sorority girl. In fact, Ive always been the first person to make fun of them. Between the claims of sisterhood and the chanting and singing and oh god, the chanting and singing, I was convinced that joining a sorority was not the way to go. Anyway, my life was already full of far more interesting things, like watching paint dry. Suffice it to say I was not expected to participate in sorority recruitment this year, which is precisely why I did so. Rather than continuing in the vein of bashing sororities indiscriminately, I wanted a valid basis for my sorority-bashing. Seriously though, I was basing my opinion of sororities on everything Id seen and heard of those in other schools. MIT sororities were apparently different. Even after a year here, I wasnt entirely convinced of that. I needed to see this for myself. Im of the opinion that the way to dispel stereotypes about MITs sororities is not to put unsuspecting girls through Formal Recruitment. Formal Recruitment, while giving people equal time to all five of MITs sororities, is sensory overload at its peak. (Youd say the same thing if you saw five instances of 100 identically dressed young women in a single day.) Sure, it works for tons of people; Im partial to the setup of frat rush, where you go where you want to go without four solid days of alphabetical order and time constraints. I did, however, realize that MITs sororities are full of amazing, driven girls, and I was glad to see that sorority stereotypes were for the most part nowhere to be found. And when I received a bid from Sigma Kappa, what had begun as a joke became an extremely difficult decision. I decided not to pledge this year, choosing to wait until next September before giving a definitive answer. So long as I never ever have to go through Formal again, that is. So heres an unwritten rule at MIT for you: sophomores start out taking at least 60 units. See, freshman year just isnt masochistic enough for us. We struggle, suffer, and complain for a full nine months, but its all for naught. The point of the first year at MIT is for us to get over ourselves. Whats that, you say? Someones doing better than I am? Toto, I dont think were in high school anymore! Everythings really hard here! Even if we poor, beaten-down no-longer-frosh come to this revelation the way were supposed to, registration for sophomore fall term begins and were all, Well, lookie here! No more credit limit! I MUST DO EVERYTHING! This is never a good idea. Sooner or later, well become aware of this. We, the overextended sophomores of MIT, will discover that the difference between four and five classes is far larger than we ever could have anticipated. Well drop a class or two and revert to the sane mans 48. I had the above epiphany after spending three hours reading my 5.07 textbook and still not coming close to understanding my problem set. I dropped the class after the first week. Now all thats left is for me to stop believing that my cursory knowledge of all of this terms material will get me As in everything else.

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