OP-ED: I Don’t Need to be Rejected by Every Sorority to Know I Have No Social Life

Signs of Greek life are everywhere on campus. They flood the hallways, the streets, and the buildings with distinct symbols that I haven’t seen since my senior year calculus class. And every January, so many girls are crestfallen to learn that their sole ticket to having anything even remotely close to a social life at Penn—admittance into a sorority—is out of reach.

But I’m not like other girls. I already know that I don’t have a social life, bid or no bid.

It all started during my first week of NSO. The night of the iconic Toga Party at the Penn Museum, somebody posted in the UPenn Class of 2021 that they changed the theme to a “Yoga Party” instead. Excited, I stopped by the nearest Lululemon and showed up to the party in yoga pants and a headband.

I could feel the my heart drop when I saw that I was dressed for the wrong occasion—nay, the wrong millennium. Who knew that wearing $150 tights to Ancient Greece could feel so wrong?

I was able to make one friend, though. She thought it was a “Yoda Party,” so she painted herself green and carried around a homemade lightsaber throughout the night.

But my only friendship was lost when I saw her a few weeks later on Locust and waved to her, and she had the nerve not to see me! And so marked the end of my social life at Penn, only a few weeks after the semester started.

I’ve come to accept—and even love—the fact that sorority rush isn’t for me. There is something comforting in knowing that I don’t need to face rejection in order to be rejected. Besides, those sororities charge a pretty hefty fee just to be in them, which is essentially the same thing as buying friends. And God knows I have plenty more important things to buy than friends, even when I don’t have any of those, either.