Sisterhood

Flashback to ten years ago. I am a freshman (or as they also called us "first years") at St. Kate's and believe it or not, I was struggling. I chose to be a commuter student which is a choice I am still glad I made at that time, however, it made it extremely difficult to make friends. I made a few connections early on in the music department, but was finding myself a bit lonely.

A few weeks into school I visited the Activities Fair. I wandered around aimlessly looking at booth after booth advertising clubs and organizations you could join and not really finding anything that really struck a cord with me. Then I found a table in the corner advertising for Lambda Sigma Tau - a sorority.

Now I know what you're thinking - Beth has never been a party girl. And you are right. What attracted me to the concept of a sorority was this - LST is a social/service sorority. So, it means that yes, the girls have fun and sisterhood is at the core - but so is giving back to the community. I decided to take a chance on it and I can honestly say, it was one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life.

Some of my favorite memories from college are memories I made as a part of LST. Volunteering at a community clean up helping clean up lawns for elderly people in the neighborhood, random trips to the MOA just to avoid homework, sister lunches in the cafeteria, playing bingo with nursing home residents, Thursday night get togethers in someone's dorm or apartment to watch Friends and ER, working as Orientation Leaders together, Birthday Tuesday at the Wild Onion, bake sale fundraisers and countless others. Nine times out of ten there would be a good chance that you'd have a fellow sister in a class with you. I eventually moved to campus so I could be even more involved and had sisters as roommates. Every year we celebrated surviving another year with a spring formal. We had leadership opportunities - I served as sisters chair and then as Vice President. We weren't without our problems - we're girls afterall - but I made so many wonderful friendships and I'm so happy to have them to this day.

There's a group of us who managed to stay particularly close all these years - I've sung at several of their weddings, two of them were hostesses (in lieu of ushers) at mine, I am the godmother to one of their babies - and even though many miles separate some of us we manage to get a group of us together about twice a year and it's like not a day has gone by. This weekend was one such opportunity and I got a picture of the occasion because we haven't done so for so long.

I owe a lot to my days in Lambda Sigma Tau - I am pretty sure I would not have survived college without it and the wonderful women who were part of it. To my sisters - thanks for ten great years and here's to many more to come.

Left to right:
Me, Justine with baby Elsa, Stefanie, Angie B, Roxy the dog, Angie W, Seon