Hola USA!

“Omg, do I actually know English??” 

Yup, those were my exact thoughts when I arrived for the very first time at MIT. Picture this: a smol 18-year-old-clueless-Peruvian-frosh arrives on campus and suddenly realizes that here people speak English waaaaaaay faster than in her English class back home. Unexpected... right? Not only that but she then is asked to download GroupMe (because of course, the entire world doesn’t use WhatsApp, duh) and gets bombarded with “brb, tbh, omw, nvm, lmk”… WHAT IS THIS?!

That was me freshman fall *insert here the slightly smiley face emoji*. So if you think you are having a hard time, please please PLEASEEEE don’t worry because you are probably not the only one feeling like this. Everything is going to be okay, even more than okay because wow for me these past three years have been the most exciting ones of my entire life. I promise. 

For all the frosh reading this: Things are a bit different now for you zoomers because MIT has gone virtual, but it is still hard (maybe even harder now, I would say) to form a community who will support you throughout your college years. But don’t worry, if things somehow turned out okay for me they will be okay for you too. My best piece of advice is to keep an open mind and try different things. I’m a firm believer that it is better to try something and then regret it than to regret not trying something in the first place. Take advantage of that P/NR (but not too much, hehe, NRs can happen… talking from experience lol), to get to know your classmates and upperclassmen, to form good memories of your first year at MIT, and to learn that it is okay if things don’t go as planned. You’ll get through this, and I promise that even though classes are hard and sometimes a PSet seems impossible, you will cherish forever the memories (and friends) formed in these ~four years at MIT.

Greek Life ≠ Neighbors / Legally Blond

Yeah… so as you might guess, we don’t have Greek Life in Peru. I had no idea of what sororities/fraternities were, let alone that there are some that are coed and accept all gender identities. Hence, I decided quite fast that I didn’t want to form part of them because I already had enough on my plate trying to adjust to a new life in a completely different country, with a different language, without any family nearby, and with close to zero familiarity to the american culture. However, like any frosh during rush week, I was hungry. And not any type of hungry, but free food hungry, so I decided to go to one of these small-talk-maybe-a-bit-awkward BBQs. And wow, I am soooooo glad I was very hungry that day because it was then when I met the people from Number 6 (Delta Psi): the coed fraternity that I am now part of.

I guess that when your whole family is more than 3,500 miles away, the friendships that you form during college become incredibly strong. And this is what I think MIT fraternities have to offer: wonderful communities that will make you feel like home. That will support you in your growth during college. That will connect you with Alums when you start looking for jobs. That will spark discussions about different topics and make you want to learn more, be a better person. Because it is in Number 6 where I found shoulders to cry when life got hard. Where I have danced until my feet hurt on a Friday night after finishing that dreaded exam. Where I have Psetted until 5am and eaten an entire pizza in the process with other sixers. Where I have found incredible friends and mentors that I will forever carry with me in my heart.

So try it out!! Maybe it works for you and you find an amazing fraternity or sorority that you end up loving. Or maybe not, and your community is instead people from your major, or people from your dorm. In any case, I truly think that everyone should give Greek Life a go, because I want everyone to experience what I have here in my frat. It is that awesome.

PS: Oh and also, being in a frat or sorority doesn’t mean that you will stop hanging out with the friends that you made in your dorm. I lived in EC my freshman year and I loved it sooo much, so I still hang out with the friends I made there :)