Twiddling Thumbs in the AI Process

[adduncan]

Good evening folks--just popping my head in for a bit before I hit the hay.

Things are slow on the AI front w/ XYZ...I know people are busy and those at the top have a LOT of work to do in addition to their regular lives, but it gets discouraging when you hear long stretches of silence where you thought there was going to be some communication.

Naturally, your mind starts wandering--maybe there's a problem w/ XYZ, maybe the alumnae don't want to initiate post-collegiates, blah, blah, blah. So you start surfing at some other options. Tonight, there was a quasi-epiphany.

When I decide to go alumna Greek, I narrowed down my 2 choices to XYZ and ABC. These were both sororities I knew from my college days (oooooo...hints!) and had strong alumnae support in my area. I knew of others that weren't colonized at my alma mater, but one in particular, TUV, I liked, but didn't pursue right away because I didn't think there were many alumnae around. Let's face it, alumnae are going to be the ones I will bond with the most in this process.

Welp, just for Ss and Gs, I took another look. Boy, was I mistaken! Not only is the main local alumnae chapter several hundred strong, there are additional "sub-branches" within different regions of this city and they have an illustrious history going back 50 continuous years! These people are serious about lifetime sisterhood!

Now here's the kicker: both of my sisters-in-law (who I love like my own real-blood sisters) are TUVs.

I dont' know if I'm making a point here (it's nearly midnite.....:::yawn:: except that there's always options. And like I've said before in posts and PMs, it's more important to be open minded as an alumna, than as a collegiate, because there are so many new factors to consider outside of school.

I'll be glad to listen to anyone's thoughts about how long to pursue XYZ before it's time to decide it's not happening. I hope I'm wrong about that tho.....

Adrienne PNAM-2003
(going to bed now......)

[Sistermadly]

Personally, I think keeping your options open during this process should be standard advice for alumna initiates, just as it is for traditional PNMs. For a variety of reasons, things might not progress with your first choice to your satisfaction, and I don't think you'd be doing yourself a disservice to investigate other options in the meantime.

No matter where you end up, the organization will be lucky to have you - the amount of dedication it takes to go through this process speaks volumes to the character of the women who are willing to pursue it... or maybe I'm just biased.

[tinydancer]

Just singing and whistling while I wait.... Things are slow for me also. I'm hoping that things will get going now that school has started up on the campus that has the chapter I hope to join. My sponsor has been really busy; she is a MAJOR officer in a church organization, her husband is not in real good health, they are having their house remodeled - just lots of stuff. She's hoping to be in contact with the chapter president shortly. I will talk to her this evening and see what's up. I hate to bug her too much because I know she really has a lot on her plate right now.
But I agree - WAITING STINKS!!

PNAM tinydancer

[SmartBlondeGPhB]

I have no idea how long you should wait on XYZ.......I guess it would depend on how bad you want to be in that group.

Have you mentioned any of this to your sisters-in-law? I don't mean in any specific words, but more the general "I didn't know that, I'm thinking about being an Alumna Initiate" and if so, what did they say?

In general, from all I've heard and seen, I think it's easier to be accepter in AI if you already know someone in the group.

I would expect an AI to have a much better idea of what they want from a group and which sorority they want to be a part of and not as "open minded" like we tell the collegians to be.

But hey, that's just my .02

[adduncan]

Thanx, Smart Blonde. The voice of other alums is always a big help.

My SILs know exactly what's going on. They're 2 of my biggest cheerleaders in this process. There's some issues in the family going on right now, but I plan on getting some more input from them once that dies down.

Re: "open mindedness". Granted, I didn't explain this well in the earlier post but your point is well-taken. From an AI POV, I see "open-mindedness" not as being wide open to where you want to end up, but open to who can give you what you are looking for. So basically, I think I'm on the same page that you are. I know what I want from a sorority, and I know what I want to contribute. However, now that I am a "post collegiate", I have more options available as far as which groups to evaluate, not just the ones that were colonized at my particular school. In this case, being open minded means being open to the possibility that a group that you weren't aware of may be more equipped and willing to give you what you are looking for than just the one you were most familiar with in your youth.

Hope it makes sense--and thanx all for reading. Your input is more valuable than I can say.
Adrienne

[DGMarie]

How goes it?

Marie