I joined a sorority in college in order to fit in with the popular girls. In order to become a popular girl. To become confident, out-going, gregarious—instead of the shy, studious person I’d always been.
What I found out, of course, is that being around the popular girls didn’t make me popular. It made me miserable. While my roommates were out partying, I was home studying or lying in bed awake afraid I’d flunk out.
When I told the president I wanted to leave, she suggested I run for office instead. I won easily because the only open office was “Chaplain.” It didn’t sound like much fun but I discovered that my main responsibility was giving a little inspirational talk at each chapter meeting.
Since I was an English major, I would pick out a poem or a passage from a novel and try to relate it to my life. It was my first effort to extract meaning from my own experience and turn it into words, into essays. I’m still doing it.
And I learned something else too--that I could belong to a group or an organization or a family without being like them. That I could make a place for myself by being myself.
A lesson I keep learning.
