Isabella McNutt ’27 is a Government and History double major, and she is a member of Alpha Chi Omega. She loves traveling, reading and music. Email her at immcnutt@wm.edu.
The views expressed in the article are the author’s own.
If you had told me during my freshman year that I’d one day be excited for sorority recruitment, I would’ve laughed (politely) and then gone back to hiding in my dorm, psyching myself up to walk into the next house with a forced smile and sweaty palms.
Spoiler alert: I wasn’t exactly what you’d call ‘confident’ when I went through recruitment as a potential new member. I felt like I was walking into a two-week-long audition where every room had brighter teeth, better hair and more coordinated clapping than the last. I spent more time obsessing over what to wear and how to answer “So, what’s your major?” than I did actually enjoying the process. I thought confidence meant performing, smiling big, talking a lot and pretending to be comfortable in my own skin when I absolutely wasn’t.
During the second weekend of recruitment, I realized that, if I wanted to find my home, I had to stop caring. I was so tired of trying to act the way I thought they wanted me to act that I just started trying to enjoy myself. I asked silly questions, I made jokes, I shared more about myself and about the things that I wanted to share rather than what I thought they wanted me to share. That second weekend was my favorite weekend of recruitment and remains so to this day. Only then was I able to find myself and my comfort zone in a house that I would then later call home.
Being on the other side of recruitment for two years now, I realize how wrong I was to be the way I was that first weekend, and how the recruitment process actually gave me the confidence I was so desperately faking.
Once I started recruiting Potential New Members myself, I wasn’t focused on impressing someone; I was focused on making someone feel at home. I saw the nerves in their eyes and remembered what that felt like. And the most beautiful part? I didn’t care if they had a perfectly polished answer or the trendiest outfit. I cared if they were genuine. I cared if they were kind. I cared if I could see them being my future sister, laughing on the couch during movie nights or crying on the floor during finals week. It hit me hard: almost everyone going through sorority recruitment spends so much time pretending to be someone they think sororities want, when all they ever wanted was someone real.
There’s this weird myth that recruitment is all about competition: who’s the ‘top house,’ who has the best outfits, who’s going to get invited back to the most houses. But from the inside, it feels nothing like that. It feels like a connection. It feels like having a meaningful conversation with someone you’ve never met before and thinking, “Wow. I want her around.”
As a sister, I learned to see every PNM not as someone to evaluate, but as someone to meet. That shift changed how I saw myself, too. I no longer felt the pressure to be perfect; I felt empowered to be myself. Because being “enough” didn’t mean being the best. It meant being authentic, being grounded and being kind. I was lucky enough to find a chapter that helped me find my inner confidence, but my only regret is that I didn’t see it before the process even began.
We talk a lot about confidence as if it’s something you either have or you don’t. But for me, recruitment built my self-assurance, brick by brick. It taught me to walk into a room and own my presence because I knew I brought something to the table, even if that something was just me.
And now, I see recruitment as a chance to help someone else feel that. To look a nervous girl in the eye and show her, “Hey, you don’t have to be anyone but yourself here. That’s enough.”
I won’t lie, recruitment is still exhausting. If these last two weeks have taught me anything, it’s that recruitment is hard, whether you’re a PNM or not. My feet still hurt, my voice still goes hoarse. And yes, we still clap and chant. But I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Because through all the small talk, dress up and chants, I found something I didn’t expect: confidence rooted in connection, compassion and community.
And if you’re a PNM who dropped out because you were wondering if you’re “too quiet” or “not sorority material,” hear me out: you don’t have to become someone else to fit in. You just have to be brave enough to be yourself. The rest will follow. It is not too late to try again if you feel you missed an opportunity. But just know that if I can find my confidence through sorority recruitment, so can you.
