I just received news in the mail that I have a new occasion to celebrate. It turns out it’s been forty years since I was initiated into a sorority freshman year in college. To be more specific, Chi Omega is actually a fraternity and not a sorority. At the time it was founded, sororities were more like little sister groups. Chi Omega was founded as a free-standing organization for women and designed as a fraternity, modeled after the fraternities for men.

Last year, I searched for an alumni group in my area. Doing so must have put me on the map as far as Chi Omega was concerned. Before that, I was considered to be “lost.”

When I checked, there was only one alumni group to consider and it wasn’t really nearby. Recently, I’ve heard rumblings of a new group forming in my area. I’ll probably check it out when it forms, but I’m uncertain what I’ll be looking for.

Sadly, I have no friends who date back to my college years. Perhaps it’s because I wasn’t there very long. After a year and a half, tuition and expenses proved too great for my family and I dropped out to work full time.

It would be many years before I returned and when I did, my goals were different. Even though I had succeeded in the professional world without it, I still wanted the satisfaction of a college degree. Fortunately, I found a program that afforded me a great opportunity to study what I wanted, accepted my earlier college credit, and provided the flexibility I needed to study and work full time. By then, my children were in high school and college, so they weren’t as labor intensive as they had been.

Graduating was a gratifying experience. I was fortunate to be able to share it with my children. I’d like to think I was a good example for them of pursuing a goal, even when there was no tangible benefit in doing so.

Nonetheless, I regret not finishing college the first time around. Maybe reconnecting with my sorority (fraternity) would be my way of bridging that gap. Maybe not.

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Photo credit: Rhonda Kalkwarf