Dispatches from Open Rush: Part One

Day One:

5:00 p.m.: Sprint home from class because I have not even BEGUN to think about my outfit. Choking back panic, vomit, and my desire to be liked.

5:32 p.m.: With half my closet strewn around my dorm room, I’m starting to despair. My roommate is about to leave and wearing an outfit that is just a little too biz cash. A pencil skirt? Jesus.

5:55 p.m.: Have finally achieved the perfect look – hot enough to seem cool but not hot enough to seem intimidating. The floral print says “I’m sweet” while the boots say “I’m edgy.” That’s what they want, right? Right?

6:20 p.m.: Standing outside the first house with thirty other girls who apparently don’t know how to get into alphabetical order. Start feeling strangely like we’re livestock at a county auction.

6:31 p.m.: Enter the first house and hand a name card to a girl outside before someone takes my jacket and hands me off to a sorority girl. Livestock feeling increases.

6:33 p.m.: Girl is SHOCKED to discover we are both from the same hometown! What a coincidence!

7:00 p.m.: First round finishes and isn’t that bad. The lemonade was pretty good. No one can find their coats.

7:05 p.m.: No, seriously, do we all have the same black jacket?

7:11 p.m.: While waiting outside the second house, guys doing guy open rush walk by and openly laugh. See who’s laughing in two weeks when you’re some pledgemaster’s bitch.

7:14 p.m.: Still, that Shake Shack tho.

7:29 p.m.: “You HAVE to meet my big. I am OBSESSED with my big. My big is, literally no lie, the COOLEST.”

7:45 p.m.: We have a break between rounds so my group heads to Saxby’s, where there’s a 40 person line composed solely of rushes. Maybe they could just make a mass order of non-fat no-whip vanilla lattes?

8:01 p.m.: I am the only person who ordered a non-fat no-whip vanilla latte.

8:17 p.m.: Head to the third house. It is now bitterly cold. Girl-with-no-tights is shaking, either from the cold or from a growing fear of irrelevancy.

8:23 p.m.: “I’ve heard some sororities make you replace your entire wardrobe with Lily Pulitzer. Isn’t that crazy? I mean, I like Lily Pulitzer.”

8:50 p.m.: Have been talking to a girl with a really distracting twitch who’s talking very close to my face. I try to take discreet steps back but she keeps leaning closer. Hit wall.

9:22 p.m.: Outside the fourth house, I learn that a girl in my line literally has pneumonia.

Check back later for Part Two!