From the Other Side

This week, I experienced several events from the “other side.” First, my sorority had a depinning ceremony for our new members to prepare them for initiation. Then, I traveled home to watch my high school’s showchoirs compete in the State Showchoir competition. Finally, we had initiation for our new members. In all three events, I felt like I experienced them from an entirely new (and unfamiliar) perspective.

Depinning is a ceremony we do for our new members on the Thursday night before initiation. At most of our ceremonies, we wear all white. Depinning is the one ceremony where we wear all black. It was so fun to watch my new friends during depinning, especially since I was on the other side of depinning just last semester and knew how excited they must have felt.

With my friends Sam and Maddie at depinning!

Initiation is an extremely special ceremony for any sorority. Following initiation, we can welcome our new members as official sisters of our sorority. This spring, we initiated 11 beautiful new members into our chapter. The initiation ceremony was both meaningful and beautiful enough to justify waking up before 7 A.M. on a Sunday!

Depinning and initiation are events that I experienced for myself just a few months ago. I remember how excited I was to get initiated and to be an official sister of Sigma Kappa. Being on the other side of both ceremonies and getting to watch the new members get initiated made me happy because I know they were feeling that same excitement.

On Saturday, I went home for ISSMA Showchoir state. State happens to be held at my former high school, and so along with revisiting my friends and former choirs, I physically revisited my former high school. The top womens choir which I performed with in high school competed at 11:15, so I got up early and left Muncie for Indianapolis with my friends Sterling and Mary.  After watching my former choir give their best performance yet, I went to the Chipotle right across the street from the high school (there’s no Chipotle in Muncie). We returned to the competition in time for awards, where my former choir won first place as well as every single caption award like best vocals, best visuals, and best band!

The top mixed group from my former high school competed at 4, and they were amazing as usual. We stuck around to watch a few other of our favorite mixed choirs from other high schools in the area, and then returned to my friend Sterling’s house for dinner which her mom had made for us. Just before we left to return to Muncie, we learned that our mixed choir had won first place and all the caption awards as well!

My friend Kim and I flashing our choir's "gang sign."

Showchoir state was strangely emotional for me for a number of reasons. Watching my former choir perform made me sad, excited, and proud all at once. I was sad because I wasn’t performing, and I was remembering how great it felt to perform at and win state last year. I’ve told my mom many times this showchoir season how weird it is watching the performance from the audience. I haven’t watched a live show of my former choir since I was a sophomore in high school; I’ve been on stage performing! While watching the performance was a little bittersweet, I felt so unbelievably excited and proud. Although there are some younger girls now in the group that I don’t know well, I know the majority of the upperclassmen and I loved watching them. My sister is also in that choir, and she is in the front row for a lot of the songs and is even part of a trio that performs in the middle of the set. I am so incredibly proud of my little sister, and that pride combined with my nostalgia made for an emotional but rewarding day.

With my sister after her choir won State!

Experiencing all of these important events from the other side makes me realize how much I’ve grown as a person within the past year. I have become more mature, more comfortable with myself, and have had many meaningful experiences. I know that there will be so many times in the future where I will still feel new and naïve, and even a bit scared, but the events over the past week make me feel confident in knowing that one day, I will be watching confidently from the other side of even the scariest of experiences.