"To be or not to be, that is the question."
William Shakespeare - Hamlet
Following up from last month’s article, it came to my mind all the different ways in which we, human beings, try to identify ourselves into this world.
The alumni we discussed is certainly an interesting way to stay in touch with a part of our college lives but there are many other ways, specially those offered during college years, in which we can feel part of something bigger than us.
It happened to me during my freshman year that someone knocked into my dorm room and asked me if I wanted to be part of a sorority. I looked at her and honestly answered I didn’t know what that was. She briefly explained to me that a sorority is a social organization for women (the male counterpart is a fraternity) and that they did a lot of social and community activities together.
It seemed quite interesting but I didn’t think I was going to have time for it since, outside of going to classes and studying, volleyball practices, meetings, physical therapy, traveling for games and game days took most of the time of my everyday life, including weekends.
This made me realized I was already part of a “society for only women” since being part of a sport team is really a lot more than just going to practice and playing games together. Specially in the USA, teams go out into the communities and help children, schools, hospitals and much more! They organize time to socialize outside the court and celebrate the accomplishments of the group and of their individuals.
I was, however, curious enough to go research a bit more about sororities (and fraternities) and learned quite a few interesting things: one of which was where the name comes from, "soror" the word for sister in Latin. It looks like in 1882, the Gamma Phi Beta women at Syracuse University began to call themselves a sorority by the suggestion of their advisor who was a Professor of Latin and thought the word suited them better.”* than fraternities for women as they were called then, I should add.
We are humans, and in particular while adolescents and young adults, we want to belong, to be part of something bigger than us and find people who share the same passions and ideas so that we can identify ourselves with a group and work on developing our character and identity.
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