[DISCLAIMER: The ‘So You Want to be Greek’ series is not meant to degrade any organization or member of an organization. It is simply me telling you an experience in order to help those who may be interested in one day becoming a member of a greek organization. I write to help, not hurt.] With that being said… let’s jump back in. Shall we?

If you can recall, we left off at the point where I’d asked a question that wasn’t deemed appropriate. This was because, people that are interested in a greek organization are expected to “IG”, or to know if the organization is having a line or not by going to their events. Remember I said that I didn’t go? Well, I knew nothing about IG’ing or anything related to it. But from the outside looking in, I may have appeared as if I thought I were a shoo-in to the organization when in all reality, I was just clueless.

Well, a few weeks after that incident I’d began to reconsider my decision about crossing after college. During this time, I talked with some trusted mentors and decided that I would go for it. Fast forward, months later, and it was probate day. (probate: a coming out or unveiling of new members of an organization) If you were to ask any member of a greek organization, “how did your probate feel?”, I’m pretty sure they’d say that the experience was indescribable. It literally went so fast that it became a blur but the feeling of having hundreds of people witness you officially become a member was amazing. Afterwards there were so many people pulling us left and right, that I can only remember the people I spoke to by looking back at pictures now.

The weeks after the probate were even more so amazing because you form what we call, “neo-syndrome”. When most people cross, they are so excited that they eat, sleep, and breathe their organizations. They tend to wear the colors or some form of paraphernalia everyday and if you spoke with them for more than five minutes, something would definitely be said about their organization (even if it had nothing to do with the conversation at hand). That my friends, is what we call neo-syndrome.

I developed it for a while, as we all tend to do, and the campus was very welcoming. I’d had people speaking to me that once walked by me as if I were invisible. My Instagram followers doubled and tripled in a matter of days, and for the first time as a college student I felt like I was finally growing and coming into my own. But all of these new feelings were short-lived for me and here’s why.

People that are greek are unknowingly (sometimes) placed on a pedestal, especially at HBCU’s. We are placed behind a glass and stripped of our personal identites. When I came into college, I was “the girl that served as Miss DRS”, “the girl that was valedictorian”, even “the girl that’s from this city”. When I crossed, all of that disappeared and I suddenly became, “Shaakira, the Zeta”. No longer did I carry my previous accomplishments. Now I carried the name and weight of an organization, and it was extremely hard to hold…

to be continued…

-From Me to You, Love.