I’m bored of this column, and surely, you are too.
Dear Greek Theater reader, first of all, who are you, and what is your problem? Second of all, while I love and appreciate your support, I’m afraid that I’ve been holding out on you. Truthfully, this column is an incomplete picture of me, my spirit and, most importantly, my whimsy. What follows is a brief introduction to the wonderful world of Grace Barkett:
Hello, my name is Grace, and I’m a first-year student hailing from sunny San Diego, California. As I once told my Golden Bear Orientation group, my favorite things to do are swim, lie in the sun and call my best friend on the phone. I’m five feet, six inches tall, and a firm believer in the finer things in life — namely, raw oysters, [redacted] and women (this comment went unappreciated by my GBO leader).
But you, dear reader, would only know one out of those three things. And mainly, because of this column, you would know that I am in a sorority.
See, that — that I don’t love.
I came up with this column idea on the fly, sitting in Caffe Strada, during my coffee chat for our noble — and evidently saveable paper — The Daily Californian. I hadn’t read the application requirements thoroughly, so when an ominous, mustached figure implored me to share my column idea, I panicked.
“So tell me about your column idea,” he prompted. I hadn’t thought that far ahead yet, so I improvised and came up with what you see today. Shockingly, he loved, or liked, the idea of a column about rush … or maybe he was just being nice.
Regardless, two weeks later, red in the face while standing at the head of a wooden dining room table, I ashamedly introduced my column to a so-called “party” filled with opinion writers. I explained my actually really cool, nuanced and in-touch take on the Greek system at UC Berkeley.
Mortifying, I know.
Having said that, I was excited about this column. I like being in Greek life, I love my friends in it, but I understood that the system had its flaws, and I was not detached from them. In many ways, I was them, and that was something I needed to approach and was ready to do.
Then, about five weeks into writing this column, I got stuck.
I struggled to find things to talk about and, despite positive feedback from my peers within Greek life, I started to feel as if no one, myself particularly, cared anymore. I had already written about parties, rush, the strange rituals we have to do — what else was there to say? Nothing. I had covered all of the bases I wanted to discuss.
Though this may sound shocking, in the words of Walt Whitman, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” Being in Greek life isn’t the sole facet of my personality. I go to parties and enjoy all of the fixings, but I do other stuff.
For example … such as … um … OK stop, I do other stuff.
I’m more than just someone in a sorority, and so are you. You know what I mean — your metaphorical sorority. Good, right?
So when I was forced to write solely under this one Greek umbrella, I struggled a lot, scrapping countless column ideas within my notes app. Look at this one: “what if I talked about frat flu and I could be like oh wow that’s actually a commentary on the greek system as a whole because like alcoholism is a vir…”
No. That’s dumb, and no one cares. You know this.
In turn, I begged my benevolent dictator of an editor to let me write about something, anything else besides this goddamn sorority. To my chagrin, I was met with, “If you can somehow connect it to Greek life, then yes,” followed by, “just think,” and “you’ll come up with something.”
F— you.
Nevertheless, I had a deadline, so I made it work — I persisted, even (shoutout Chelsea Clinton). For nine glorious ego-inflating and ego-deflating weeks, I came up with column after column that drew home to my sacred sisterhood.
And it was fun. But it needs to end. Now.
Though I was having fun, I was not able to come up with things that were not only entertaining and soul feeding, but also about Greek life.
I was met with this strange tug and pull when pitching ideas and making outlines. I could go the cynical route and s— on Greek life in its entirety, which is not only a) untruthful, but also b) hypocritical. Or I could just talk about how much I love it and how awesome the parties are and blah blah blah — that’s stupid. That’s a bad idea. Not only do people not want to read that but, most importantly, I don’t want to write it.
So what did I do? I limboed. I did a little bit of this and a little bit of that, leading to what you’re reading right now. Ta-da!
So, to my Daily Cal overlords, I am sorry. I’ve been a naughty little columnist. I know I signed up for this, and I should have done some soul-searching, but I didn’t.
It’s obvious, I think, the real moral that I learned through my experience: We are all a lot more than one organization that we are a part of. We are a lot more than who we are friends with and, most certainly, we are more than the sarcastic columns we write.
Right now, as always, my editor is telling me, “You need one more paragraph,” but in full honesty, I have nothing more to say.
