[media-credit name=”ALYSSA HANDELMANN” align=”alignnone” width=”403″][/media-credit]

To my innumerable hordes of female readers,

While I lack any semblance of official affiliation with Greek life, I managed to infiltrate a local sorority in a “She’s The Man” type-fashion to get the inside scoop of what really goes on in those Marc Jacob scented halls.

If you’re attractive enough to consider partaking, I’m here to help you winnow through the good, the bad, and the ugly of sorority life through my totally factual observation.

Pros

1. You’ll go from paunchy to raunchy! When people think fraternities they generally imagine “the dad bod”—relatively soft young men with large arms and larger tummies. Your version starkly contrasts this. Harsh and physically taxing volunteer work like bake sales coupled with weekly pillow fights will keep you in tip-top shape.
   In addition, the unnatural and awkward positions you’ll force your body into for every group picture are a fantastic way to strengthen muscles you never thought you’d use. Whether you’re blasting your delts with the Kappa Alpha Theta diamond salute, or toning your thighs with the more general “half-squat to look smaller than your friends,” you’re bound to get that body all the magazines say you need to be hot.

2. Superior education.  Where better to pick up those confusing letters used in calculus, trig and statistics than in Greek life? Things like delta (used for rate of change), theta (used for unknown angles) and mu (the 151st Pokemon) are all potentially lost on the fairer sex. Joining a sorority forces you to round yourself, and really drills in those hard-to-grasp concepts like knowing more than 26 letters.

3. Maintaining the upper-crust mentality. If you’re a bit of a debutante with a certain ingrained lifestyle, this is the social group for you. Extensive research from yours truly has shown that a sorority may cost about two whole times as much per semester as our most-esteemed fraternites.
   This helps keep the riff-raff/in-staters out and allows for a more unified house of Connecticut/New York girls. These ideals extend further than just economic reasons, mind you.
   In most schools, it is completely forbidden to store or consume alcoholic beverages on sorority property—this is so the members don’t have to deign to the classless festivities of their peers.
   Instead, they pound half-shots of Smirnoff in cars outside frats and quaff heavily from sacks of Sunset Blush Franzia in their friends’ dorms, completely separated by their feminine sophistication and serene grace.

Cons

1. The immediate replacement of your biological family. The second you join, you’re immediately forced to kick your old bloodline to the curb. You must discard your weekly call with your mom to chat with your Big, and blow off grandma’s Thanksgiving dinner to spend time with your Grand-Big.
   All the money you could spend on your blood-related little sister for her birthday is immediately siphoned into spoiling your Little with custom-decorated paddles.
   This may seem like a pro at first, due to the 20 extra Facebook and Instagram likes you’re now guaranteed, but slowly your real family will start to resent you more than when you went through that scene phase in eighth grade.

2. The harmful stereotyping. People are constantly poking fun at women who participate in Greek life for their vacuous personalities, unwholesome sexuality, and penchant to dress exactly alike—it hurts! Don’t worry though, maybe you’ll be the one cool exception and everyone else will be the lemming that fills the mold.
3. Greek games don’t actually resemble any olden-day sports. If you decided to join a sorority for the historic accuracy of the events, you—like many others—are making a grave mistake.
   These games don’t include any real traditional Greek competitions such as the naked wrestle, discus throw, ouzo chug, baklava peel, body-hair shave and debate against Rome why the Gods shouldn’t be named after planets.
   After learning the real events, I thought I would completely dominate the competition due to having a slightly-less effeminate body than my opponents, but I was wrong.
   Apparently it just isn’t enough to have 138 pounds of hulking man-meat on your tug-of-war squad when that’s only about a third of the weight an average sorority sister can pull down.