The way I see it, my role as “academic enhancement enchantress” expired the minute my daughter got an acceptance letter from the college of her choice. I gleefully tendered my resignation from the text books - exams - group projects - report cards cheer squad. There must be loads of moms (kind moms, patient moms) out there who thrive in the homework hovering experience, but I feel free as a lark to be done with this part of the parenting job.
But - when our daughters take off for college, do they jump from our environment of 110% study support to floating in the winds of academia like a dandelion fleck? Isn’t this a bit of a largish transition? The good news for parents is, just because we have relinquished our supervisory roles, doesn’t mean that our daughters will stop receiving scholastic encouragement…not if they are members of a sorority.
NPC sororities seem to be keenly interested in seeing that our daughters maintain high grades. On most campuses, it is important and prestigious to be the sorority that earns the highest combined GPA for a particular semester. In addition, the local alums and each sorority’s inter/national officers put a high priority on seeing that each chapter is doing their best scholastically. To this end, a variety of motivating programs are in place -
- scholarship dinners, professors nights
- weekly awards for quiz grades, semester awards for high GPAs, chapter and inter/national sorority-based scholarships
- quirky, fun awards for things like best combined Big Sister/Little Sister GPAs
- some chapters print up a review of courses which reveal the inside scoop regarding captivating, entertaining, and/or reasonable professors
- “Dinner by Major” - sorority sisters who share the same major dine together, to discuss which classes are valuable, which to avoid, which to take which semester, career paths, related summer internships, etc.
Wouldn’t you say that this is a definite PLUS to sorority membership? To sum up, if your daughter is a member of a sorority, this significant, historical organization is interested in your daughter’s grades! I feel smug when I consider that it requires a large organization (many of the NPC groups are well over 100,000 strong in terms of all the collegians and all of the alums) to take over where I left off!
One final thought - will anybody in any of the alternative collegiate living arrangements take any sort of interest in our daughters’ academic pursuits?
