I couldn't be happier, right here.

The sisters of Phi Sigma Rho at Michigan State University have successfully completed our first RUSH week! :D :D Well, it was over a span of two weeks actually, but that's besides the point. We had been waiting for these events since the end of last spring semester, and it's already come and gone. My friend, Mariah, is our Rush Chair and she had been working on all of the rush stuff ALL summer long. This including, planning what events we were going to do, where and when we were going to do them, coordinating how we would advertise our sorority to new girls, buying all of the materials needed for the events, planning our bid acceptance event, AND the new class induction ceremony. Boy, did she have her hands full, and she did SUCH A FANTASTIC JOB. Seriously, I'm so proud of her and how well everything went!

From the beginning, we had about 75 girls on the email list, which cut down to about 30 that attended at least one rush event, and now we have 17 that accepted their bids and have been inducted as our Beta class. :) I cannot believe that we're close to doubled in size, with so many new faces!

Rush week was so much fun though. Here's what we did:
1. First Night: General Information with Q&A session to learn about who we are, what we do, and why you should join. Then we got into groups (mixing the potential new members in with the Alpha class!) and played an awesome engineering game called Bigger & Better. Each group is given a bag full of random items from glow sticks to toilet paper to plastic bags and the goal is to make the "biggest" or "best" something. All of the girls were so creative and it was a great to get to know them for the first time in that kind of setting.

Working together in groups since that's what we do in all of our engineering classes!

The winners: Most Creative, Biggest, and Best awards!

2. Night 2: Craft Night! This was definitely a lot of the girls' favorite night. Mariah found a whole bunch of penguin and star related crafts on Pinterest (because those are two of our symbols) and the girls just had a blast making them. It was awesome because there was enough time for each girl to make multiple crafts so they could meet new people at each station. And once again, we could all show off our girly and creative engineering side :)

So many penguins and stars!!!!

Penguin Family :)

4. Third Night: Game night! Mariah brought about 12 board and card games from home, many of which I had never heard of but were definitely fun to play and learn. We split up into groups and played each game for about twenty minutes before rotating to another group and another game. The winner of each game would record points, and whoever had the most points at the end of the night won MSU Dairy Store Ice Cream Coupons. This was one of my favorite nights because I LOVE board games, especially the classics like Scrabble and Monopoly! 

4. The fourth and final night was an ice cream social! Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures from this night.. This is mostly because I was volunteered to scoop all of the ice cream since I have had two summers of previous experience :P. It was delicious though because we had MSU Dairy Store ice cream (I mean, who doesn't these days?!) and the girls were able to ask all of their final questions. We also played "Speed Sistering" so that the potential new members could tell us last minute anything about themselves that would help them get a bid.

In the end, I liked all of the girls who I talked to that week, and I'm so excited to welcome 17 new wonderful ladies into our family. :D