Picture this: you’re walking back to your dorm room from Perkins, chatting with friends only to look up at the second story windows of Russel E and see a girl, face essentially pressed against the window, watching you. You do a double take—yes, she is in fact staring right at you. Here’s the punch line, that girl in the window is me, and “you” are the poor girl who just caught me stalking her from my window. Now let me explain; when this assignment instructed for me to observe an interaction, I decided it was too cold for me to face the outdoors and that opting for some reverse peeping tom action was my best bet. Anyway, this situation that just occurred did inspire the spark of an idea for this blog, as it took me back to last weekend when, in between my own sorority recruitment rounds, I sat back and watched other girls, being as there wasn’t much else to occupy myself with. So I think I am going to break the rules of this assignment and talk about that aforementioned experience. 

Prior to my second round of recruitment, I was on the phone with my family at home updating them about my weekend so far and explaining to them how I had to rank my top nine sororities. The following day, depending on how many sororities invited me back, I’d have to go to somewhere from one to nine chapters. I joked to my family that I hoped half the sororities didn’t like me so that I wouldn’t have another terrifyingly hectic day. My father replied something along the lines of: “Honestly, unless you’re fake while talking to every sorority, you couldn’t possibly be a perfect match for each because they all have their own personalties.” This point he made got me thinking.

Are we really ever completely ourselves when we meet a person for the first time? For most people whom I applied this question to, the answer was no. Half of the reason for this could be attributed to shyness, but I think the overarching evidence proves that we are all so desperate to impress others. We want to fit in, we want to be liked, and that’s a natural part of life. But I think that all too often, we try to act in a way that people will think is ‘cool,’ or only share the details about ourselves which would ‘wow’ the targeted audience, instead of being our genuine selves. 

If I’m honest, I found myself doing that a few instances during the beginning of the past weekend. At different sororities I revealed different things about myself, and recounted different stories that I knew would matter more to that particular group of girls, instead of what maybe truly represented myself. I know for a fact that others did this too, from what I gathered while observing them. Once my sororities were a bit more narrowed down, I realized that it was pointless. I would never want to be part of a sorority that I didn’t click with naturally anyway. 

But this whole process made me think, about the way we interact with others, the way we perceive them and ourselves, and the way that we concern ourselves with what others thinks of us. This applies to sorority recruitment of course, but also to how we present ourselves online, how we choose the people we associate with, and really any other type of social situation. I think we have lost the value of genuine human interaction because relationships have become so public. And since that is the case, and it doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon, I think it’s about time for people to discover the courage to be themselves in all aspects of life, despite what someone else might label them as (even if it’s “the creepy girl staring out the window”).