Recruitment Day #3

Day One? Check. Day Two? Check. Day 3? Not check whatsoever. Two years later, I am not only still telling this story, but also am still convinced a mysterious Creswell hobbit snuck into room 810 and turned off my alarm and my roommate’s. And I guess after two days in a row of waking up at 4:30 a.m., our sleep cycles were rebelling. You can probably guess where this is going and you are exactly right. My roommate and I awoke to our respective gamma chi’s phone calls at 6:15 a.m (ya know 15 minutes AFTER we were supposed to be there.) Cue two frantic girls in matching shirts sprinting down Baxter to Tate like their lives depended on it (and at the moment, we definitely thought that was the case.) As Tate got closer, our fears of being released from recruitment were growing, eclipsing all other logical thoughts, literally all of them. To this day I cannot fathom HOW I forgot that A) I shower in the morning + B) I had woken up 1 hour and 45 minutes too late to shower = C) I had not showered in 24 hours and wow was my tiny, thin hair gonna announce that to the world. “Okay Tina, yeah, no worries that your hair looks like you’ve just gelled it back. Right? Right….” I repeated to myself as I sat on a bus full of girls with styled, brushed, and ya know clean hair.

Pulling my hair into a bun and smiling through the pain, I braced myself for the first 20 minute round. Ten minutes in and the cold fear around my heart was slowly loosening as I joked about my less than streamlined morning. Until…. “Ohhh that’s so funny! So your hair is still wet from the shower?” asked an active member at my first house of the day. “Ha ha ha ha no it’s just dirty…..” I replied as I mentally calculated how quickly I could flee the country with a whopping 17 cents in my savings account. If you’re curious, not quickly at all, and so I resolved to tough it out until our lunch break rolled around and I could take a severely needed shower.

Before I admit to what will come to be the most embarrassing moment of my 18 years, I would like to remind you all that I had only lived in the dorms for four days and hadn’t yet mastered the art of not locking myself out of my room. So after taking the quickest cold shower of my life, I velcroed my brand new (monogrammed obvi) towel wrap, wrapped my hair in a towel, grabbed my handy dandy shower caddy, and fast walked back to my room in my shower shoes. Only to find, as you can guess, a locked door. With my phone inside, not that I had anyone to call since everyone I knew was at Tate for sorority recruitment. It was at this moment that I realized for the first time that the universe was plotting against me and orchestrating my demise. I cannot tell you where I found the courage to drop my shower caddy at the door and stalk to the 8th floor elevator. I step in as the doors open, trying my hardest to ignore the confused and concerned stares of a father and his son for the entirety of what is now known as the longest and most awkward elevator ride ever. Finally we arrive at the lobby, and I marched to the Creswell front desk as confidently as one can in shower shoes. The people at the front desk stared at me like I had sprouted multiple heads, as I explained that I was locked out of my room, had 30 minutes to get back to Tate, and yes this was a matter of life and death. And yes, I’m aware that I’m standing here in my towel wrap. What I was not aware of, however, was that it was boy’s move in day and it was in full swing. I am 100% not exaggerating when I say moms were literally shielding their sons’ eyes from the half naked girl (me) in the lobby who confirmed all their worst fears about college.

Although I’m still unsure how I refrained from melting into a pool of mortification, this story has a happy ending. Since I didn’t know my 810-number to check out a key, a saint at the front desk escorted my very frantic self to my room. I threw on the assigned t-shirt, began the descent to Tate, and started to see the light at the tunnel (the light being that this was a long enough story to take up all of the awkward conversation time at the rest of the houses). So this story not only is a testament to the resilience of one small PNM, but is also proof that no matter what happens during recruitment, it all works out in the end.

- Written by Tina, Gamma Chi -