Today I am going to share 1o lessons I learned from being Greek. Being in a sorority when I was in college taught me so many things, some being really important life lessons, which I will share below, and some pretty vital but not so serious life lessons as well. Being in a sorority throughout my entire collegiate career was definitely a wonderful and rewarding experience. I met some of the most wonderful people and made so many memories that I will cherish forever. I will never forget the day of my initiation and how my life changed for the better. Now onto the 10 lessons I learned from being Greek.
Lessons I Learned from Being Greek
1. Time Management.
This is probably the most helpful thing I learned throughout my sorority experience. Being able to manage your time is a necessity because it can be rather difficult to juggle school work, 4-5 different classes, a job, and any other extra curricular activities if you do not know how to properly prioritize things. I learned how to do this due to the fact that being in a sorority requires a rather heavy and extensive time commitment. I also always held officer positions throughout my collegiate years so that definitely tacked on some extra time that I needed to plan my school and studying schedule around. To keep up with everything, I utilized to-do lists and planners and mapped out each and every day so that I could get everything done in a timely fashion. This meant having my day planned out from the time I woke up almost until it was time to go to bed. It was very beneficial though because I never had to worry about when I’d have time to complete an assignment with my hectic schedule.
2. How to Communicate More Efficiently.
From holding offices, to recruitment, to mixers, you will definitely learn how to speak to a variety of different people and become pretty dang good at it. Especially during recruitment, you will talk to so many girls from different backgrounds and learn how to hold pretty substantial conversations even if you don’t have all that much in common with the person. It can be exhausting but mastering small talk is definitely beneficial for later in life. I would also like to think this is the reason why the whole post-grad interviewing process is not as difficult as I thought it would be.
3. You Gain an Amazing Support System
While you may not love every single person in your chapter or hang out with them all on a daily basis, if anyone needed you, you would definitely be there for them in a heartbeat. At the end of the day, that person was selected to be a member of your sisterhood, so clearly they have some great qualities even if you may not see them just yet. Of course I can’t speak for every chapter out there, but this held true for my chapter.
4. Sorority Recruitment is no Joke.
I know this one may sound a little silly, but it’s definitely very true. You slave over perfecting everything for months just for a few nights of recruitment. It’s intense and over in the blink of an eye but by the end of the process, you want to go home and sleep for a week straight because you’re so freaking tired. Trust me, after bid day I hibernated and caught up on my studies for a few days because I definitely had a major recruitment hangover each year.
5. Mandatory Study Hours Suck, But They Are Definitely Worth It.
I know you probably hate doing those countless hours of study hours each week but trust me, if you actually focus and do your work during them, you will save yourself so much time in the long run. I found that when I was productive in them, I cut my at home studying time in half and had more time for fun things like catching up on my tv shows or hanging out with my friends. Might as well take advantage of the time you’ve spent there instead of being unproductive and wasting your time.
6. It’s Not 4 Years, It’s For Life.
I always heard this saying before joining and always kind of rolled my eyes at the statement..but when I graduated, I realized how true it was. It’s been a year since I have become an alumnae and I still talk to a lot of my sisters on a daily basis..and I don’t seeing that changing anytime soon either. Also, there are other ways to get involved once you’ve graduated like attending events as an alumnae or even joining your local alum chapter and meeting new sisters through there.
7. Take Advantage of Leadership Opportunities.
Not going to lie, when I first set foot into the real world I didn’t even think twice about how my sorority executive board experience would help me in the slightest..but I quickly came to realize that all of my leadership experience within my chapter had helped me to be a lot more confident when addressing a large group of people and overall be a better leader.
8. Ritual Will Really Touch Your Heart.
This is also very cheesy, but as someone who isn’t very religious, I was truly shocked at how much my sorority’s ritual ended up meaning to me. To share a bond with your sisters that no one else outside of your greek organization has any knowledge of is truly amazing.
9. How to Dress for Absolutely Any Occasion
Being in a sorority, you have lots of different events to dress up for including formal, chapter meetings, and various other events and you have to be properly dressed for each different occasion. I definitely learned what proper business attire was from being a sorority because we were required to wear business attire to basically every chapter meeting and would get reprimanded if we weren’t wearing the right thing. It has definitely been helpful in the real world because I already had some business-y clothes prior to entering the workforce.
10. Give Back to the Community
Now I was pretty big on community service in high school, but through my sorority that love for philanthropy grew even greater. We participated in so many different philanthropic events whether it was our own, other greek chapters, or even ones that were put on by the university. I enjoyed participating in every single event and looked forward to donating my time to each cause. My all time favorite philanthropic event would have to be the one that was put on by the university called FTK or For the Kids. A lot of other colleges host a similar event, the biggest known one is called THON at Penn State. Now that I’m graduated, I still thoroughly enjoy volunteering and can’t wait to get on a schedule to where I can go out and volunteer my time to a cause that I truly support every few months.
As you can see, being in a sorority had a lot of impact on me and I am so happy to have had this rewarding experience. Greek life is typically perceived in such a negative light so I am glad to be able to bring a positive view of it to the table.
Were/are you in a sorority? If so, what have you learned from your experience? Did you learn any lessons from being Greek? Let me know down in the comments. I hope you enjoyed reading about these lessons I learned from being Greek.
