The Emerald Newsletter | Kappa Delta Chi Sorority Winter 2016 | Page 17

17

Updates from Collegiate Affairs

By Marisa Kathleen Lopez, Chi Chapter, University of Texas at San Antonia

Reprinted from The Odyssey Online.com

I am in my last year of college (YAY) and as I look onwards to the finish line I like to take a moment to recollect on my experience years. The biggest being that I became a sorority girl.

My experiences are broken down in four ways: how I felt before joining, how I felt/feel now that I am in one, and how it has changed my life.

BEFORE JOINING

I remember, graduating from high school, declaring whole-heartedly to my parents and my boyfriend that I did not want to join anything. I have always been in some type of organization or activity since elementary. I’d been in orchestra since the fifth grade to the day I graduated from high school, did track from seventh to eighth, was in Student Council and Theatre since my freshman year and then joined the cheerleading/dance team my sophomore year. I was committed to all of my high school organizations until I graduated, so now I sport a beautiful “B” on my Letterman with several little details proclaiming that I did not quit anything and even earned bars for my years of dedication.

But ultimately I felt burnt out. I was tired and for once, I just wanted to focus on school.

As you can obviously tell, life decided that this was not going to happen.

You see, I moved to San Antonio, Texas on my own. My only friends from high school that close either went to the University of Texas at Austin or Saint Mary’s (spoiler alert, I never saw them). I felt lonely and wanted to make friends. So I headed out to a random event that UTSA was hosting that day. That is where I was introduced to a variety of sororities.

UTSA hosts four councils of Greek life. I won’t get into the specs, but I awkwardly found my way to two sororities that I never knew even existed: Latina based sororities.

You see, I had only ever seen the sororities you see on TV or in movies. And they were rarely ever painted in a pretty picture and mainly consisted of white women.

Now, I’d like to say that UTSA is much more diverse in all its councils and they do not only consist of white women. But at the time, that is all I really knew. So seeing these two sororities really spoke to me. To me, I was

seeing women that looked like

me that had the same values and goals that I have. These sororities were Sigma Lambda Alpha and Kappa Delta Chi. Although I admit, I requested information for both these organizations, I ended up falling in love with Kappa Delta Chi.

You see, although both organizations are beautiful and encompass a sisterhood that is unique, I just found my home in Kappa Delta Chi (the nickname being KDChi).

I managed to make a friend that was also interested in KDChi and she encouraged me to go to every rush event with her.

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