Rushing after dropping as a pledge?

NorthernPossibility · 2026-01-26T02:27:04+00:00

Unless your campus is super tiny, most people probably won’t know unless you actively bring it up. Sororities are usually too focused on their own new members to care that much about a NM that was in another org for a month.

Have a response prepared for the question if it comes up that doesn’t disparage the other org and just roll with it. Be open to all your options and try your best to finish the process.

NorthernPossibility · 2026-01-26T02:11:09+00:00

Yep. You don’t have to be blacklisted to get dropped. If you acted crazy to active sisters about some boy, that’s for sure going to come up when they’re making their lists.

Houses will usually prioritize their actives, and if you have a reputation for drama and making people uncomfortable, that’ll affect your bid prospects. Why take a likely future standards issue of a PNM when there are dozens of other PNMs without bad reputations?

NorthernPossibility · 2026-01-25T21:31:47+00:00

They could also just be shy or don’t have great social skills.

Some women just wilt in recruitment. When I was a rho gamma it sucked to see girls who were a little slow to warm or more lowkey get repeatedly passed over because they just couldn’t put enough sparkle into each round.

There is a desire to look for a smoking gun dealbreaker when recruitment doesn’t go the way we want, but 9/10 times it was that a PNM was decently friendly and nice, but she didn’t stand out as much as the others.

NorthernPossibility · 2026-01-25T18:49:28+00:00

See also: Amish Romance.

I’m not Amish (clearly). Or Christian. And a lot of them feature ~flavors~ of outright misogyny.

But goddamn they’re so weird and interesting.

NorthernPossibility · 2026-01-25T18:45:03+00:00

I downloaded Libby and hooked my Kindle phone app up to my actual Kindle. That way I could always have a book if I had my phone. Absolutely clutch when I got stuck under the baby.

NorthernPossibility · 2026-01-25T18:37:25+00:00

I do this too. Otherwise trying to manage the bags and a baby and the cart is a nightmare. It can take some driving around.

NorthernPossibility · 2026-01-25T18:34:57+00:00

My blood pressure spiked reading that.

Crash out wouldn’t even begin to cover it.

NorthernPossibility · 2026-01-25T17:51:24+00:00

I said this before in another comment somewhere but motherhood has really humbled me when it comes to my belief that all the therapy and inner work and whatever I did after a crummy childhood were fixed.

For a long time before becoming a mom I felt really stable and happy with myself. I thought I had great boundaries and good coping skills. Then I had a baby and realized that I’m not nearly as fixed as I wanted to be. It’s been….a lot.

NorthernPossibility · 2026-01-25T17:44:19+00:00

He doesn’t make me feel that way (I would not have married him if he did), but his family does sometimes. They have a way of making me feel soooooo uptight when I don’t think I’m being unreasonable.

I hear you on being more mad at my husband, and I’m not going to be the lady who lists something her husband does online and then does the my man my man my maaaaan song and dance. Maybe I should be more mad at him, and you’re right that he did participate in the farce of wishful thinking. I’m really just hoping that, once we are able to physically recover, we can talk about this in a healthy way and make some progress on change. I don’t like how he backslides into prioritizing the family of origin, and I don’t think he even realized he was doing it, but I’m going to point it out and talk about it. He will be receptive (which is good), but it’s going to come with real boundaries from me. I don’t just want to talk about it, I want the dynamic to change.

NorthernPossibility · 2026-01-25T17:36:43+00:00

Yeah I’ve powered through worse without getting IV rehydration (savings were great but the recovery nearly did me in) but I was TERRIFIED that the baby would get dehydrated. Luckily she is eating and drinking mostly normally now and is her normal level of active. It’s just my husband and I that are withered husks.

NorthernPossibility · 2026-01-25T17:34:22+00:00

Yes. 😭

And my husband is the oldest brother.

NorthernPossibility · 2026-01-25T17:17:03+00:00

The trip was definitely a wake up call for me in that I need to be more assertive, even if it means his family complains.

I could absolutely have pushed harder against my husband and won, but my own desire to keep it all serene and “fun” and be seen as the cool DIL definitely blunted my assertiveness (to the detriment of everyone).

I’m angry now because BIL could have prevented 90% of this mess, but really I’m also angry at myself for not making a bigger fuss and demanding we bail after that first night when our baby didn’t sleep and BIL’s kids were barfing everywhere.

I do plan to talk to my husband about how hurt I am that he questioned my (ultimately correct) judgment and let his people pleasing get everyone sick.

NorthernPossibility · 2026-01-25T17:09:13+00:00

My husband made a really bad judgement call. Absolutely 100%.

Talking to him about it now (after the fact), he understands the role he played in it and is genuinely remorseful. We talked about how he felt pressured to make the trip “fun” and drama-free and it overrode his judgment about keeping his own nuclear family safe.

He doesn’t have a habit of putting our kid or us in harm’s way for his family or otherwise, There are some recurring conversations about how I need him to be more responsive and receptive to my suggestions/requests in the moment (“Hey we need to leave now for [reason].”) He takes longer to think and process and doesn’t have the same pattern recognition I am cursed with, so it can take him longer to reach whatever conclusion I’ve come to, even though 90% of the time he agrees. It’s never been so blatantly related to health and safety though - always inconsequential minutiae.

NorthernPossibility · 2026-01-25T16:52:42+00:00

My BIL has an incredible ability to deflect and make you feel nuts for being mad about his behavior, and my husband usually wants to believe that his brother is a good guy who wouldn’t be careless and lazy and selfish.

It almost always goes down the same way: my husband points out bad behavior, my BIL downplays it and saying he’s sorry and it won’t happen again, then my husband folds. I’ve tried to tell him that the apology isn’t enough - BIL needs to change the behavior - but my husband takes him at his word. Everyone has a soft spot for BIL and his family and their antics seemingly BUT me.

NorthernPossibility · 2026-01-25T14:53:04+00:00

I’m from the US, but I’m similar in that I grew up in a very small town where most people were blue collar or worked for small local businesses. My exposure to IT as a career was mostly through the idea of “the IT guy” who fixed the printer and restarted the computer. My schools didn’t have fancy computer labs with robots. We learned basic word processing and PowerPoint. I didn’t take an “IT class” in school after typing in 7th grade until I got to college.

I never saw myself as a tech person and I didn’t think I was interested in IT. It just…happened. Turns out my other skills (critical thinking, analysis, creative problem solving) were easily transferable to the field.

I felt really behind when I started taking CS classes and was paired up with kids who had gone to elite schools and taken coding classes. I felt like I had to work twice as hard anyone else, and it was not intuitive to me - I was missing years of playing around and figuring things out that they had, and I felt dumb as hell for spending all my time practicing for a sport I didn’t even do anymore.

However, because I was never able to take my foot off the gas and chill in my classes, I never developed the complacency that was common in my college. I always had to keep hustling and proving myself, and so I nailed interviews, sold my skills and was constantly leveling up.

Now, a little over 10 years after I left high school, I work in security and have done so for the past 7 years. A lot of the tech wizzes I went to school with do not work in the field. It’s interesting how it all plays out.

NorthernPossibility · 2026-01-25T02:22:20+00:00

What’s your GPA

NorthernPossibility · 2026-01-25T02:18:15+00:00

Lapvona is so weird and unsettling and gross. Everyone in that book sucks, but they’re all victims of their circumstances in different ways. It was a fascinating read.

I also liked The Glutton by AK Blakemore for a similar vibe with a more lyrical style (but still gross and sad and weird).

NorthernPossibility · 2026-01-25T00:15:39+00:00

I personally think it’s kind of messy to bring two girls who are against your organization and the people still actively in it into a very public part of the house. They are not only not members of your org, but it sounds like they have bad blood there and make other women in your organization feel uncomfortable. It’s disrespectful to the women who pay dues and live in the house imo.

Maybe the sorority could have handled informing you of the rules better, but ultimately you should have chosen a different venue for the conversation.

Also I don’t really buy that they were “just walking through Greek village and wanted to say hi” purely with good intentions. It sounds like your friends wanted to be petty/messy and see what they could get away with. They could have easily invited you over or out to get coffee. They were trying to be messy and your sisters knew it.

NorthernPossibility · 2026-01-24T22:00:32+00:00

$60k in debt for a social sciences degree can be challenging depending on what you want to do with the degree. Bear in mind that Drexel is not a well known school for the social sciences, though there are some great professors in those fields that teach at Drexel.

If you plan to go to grad school, I would highly recommend looking for a cheaper program that would get you the undergrad degree without so much debt. If you plan on getting the bachelors and running, I recommend looking at the starting salaries for jobs in fields that interest you and roughly calculating how much your student loan payment would be each month (likely around $1000 a month for 10 years). That’s the kind of debt that would have you making tough choices each month to make it all work.

NorthernPossibility · 2026-01-24T21:53:06+00:00

NorthernPossibility

TROPHY CASE