Ihave sacrificed my body in the name of club flag football by accumulating as many bruises as there are stars in the sky.<\/p>\n
I didn’t know much about Harding culture when I got here. I learned the hard way that the Stu was a place rather than a really popular guy everyone wanted to hang out with, and “car keys” chapel came as a pleasant but noisy surprise. It literally took me about a month to realize that “caf” was an abbreviation for “cafeteria.”<\/p>\n
I moved into Sears dorm as a straight-out-of-momma-bird’s-nest freshman wearing a camo band T-shirt, black Toms and black skinny jeans with really bad emo bangs and eyebrow makeup. Two sophomores were helping me move my belongings into my room when they asked, “Have you thought about joining a social club?” Not really knowing what I was getting myself into, I replied with my passive token response to almost every question, “I don’t know, maybe.” The two girls looked at my nose ring, looked at each other, exchanged a smile and said, “You should look into joining Delta Nu.”<\/p>\n
This was my first of many awkward interactions during the long process of joining a social club. I showed up to the open house thinking that I would keep an open mind about choosing a club to pursue. However, Delta Nu was the only club that didn’t scare me, so I put all of my eggplants into that one basket. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but does anyone, really?<\/p>\n
In high school, your friends are literally handed to you on a silver platter, but in college, you actually have to try to make friends. It took a while for me to acquire this skill (let’s be real, I still don’t think I’ve mastered it) so I showed up to all of the mixers and visitation alone. Miraculously, I received my bid in the mail.<\/p>\n
If you’ve survived club week you can say the same, but this week was probably one of the strangest of my life. I had never cheered before and had definitely never been escorted by a boy to a three-legged kickball game before. I meticulously decorated my club book at 2 a.m., and I remember getting upset because I didn’t win the contest for cutest club book; my sisters were just as artsy or more than I was. After staying up to the wee hours of the night, I still had to wake up at 6 a.m. in order to make it to breakfast as soon as the caf opened with the rest of my induction class. I also remember crying at one point because I was embarrassed I didn’t know what the shot put was. Being jerseyed by my big at the end of a hard week was one of the most rewarding and memorable moments from my time at Harding.<\/p>\n
As a senior, I still don’t know how to tie a tie. As the club’s treasurer, I hate the fact that I have to be a little bit too strict to get people to pay dues. I don’t go to a lot of functions because I can never afford them and I only play a few of the club sports. I’m about to participate in my last club process, and to be honest, I still don’t really know what I’m doing, but I don’t regret one second I’ve spent with my club. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
You don’t have to join a club to have a social life at Harding, but if you are anything like me, doing so will really change your life for the better. Delta Nu turned an antisocial loner with a camo band T-shirt, bad hair and bad eyebrows into a girl who was no longer afraid of social interactions with better hair and better eyebrows, but the same camo band T-shirt. When you join a club, you instantly make an entirely new family who loves you and would probably do anything for you. I needed to take that step in my life. I needed to break out of my shell and open my heart to new relationships. I needed that support system. And my club gives me that at the end of every meeting when we form a circle, join hands and sing in unison.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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