How Getting Blacklisted from Every Sorority Started my Career

Raise your hand if you have ever felt personally victimized by a sorority girl! Well I have, and you may recognize me from this video:

@gracejohanna

the truth comes out💀 Trauma makes you funnier right? Thanks for 90k!! #sorority #college #moodflip #newfitfeelin

♬ Bulletproof – La Roux

And much awaited, here is the story on what really happened. 

TikTok has propelled the careers of many influencers — some as big as Charli D’Amelio,  who has just reached an incredible yet concerning amount, 100 million, or like me, with almost 200,000. But the question TikTokers are asked often is why did you start making the content that you did? Well mine is a funny story, but also stems from deep rooted college trauma. I was a transfer student my sophomore year of college at the University of Delaware. Originally, I was a volleyball player at my last college, but I felt I wasn’t getting the full college experience that I so desperately wanted. 

Transferring to UD felt right, and after a year of hard work and dedication being a collegiate athlete — a.k.a riding the bench — I wanted to be able to let loose and have fun. I might have had too much fun though, because when it came time to make impressions on other girls I was mistaking their interest in me as a positive thing. Their kindness was transparent, and they probably wanted to get displaced revenge on a blonde girl. And I felt that revenge harshly when it came time.

After the best fall semester ever I was so giddy to sign up for recruitment, all my best friends were already in the best sororities so I felt incredibly confident. I would consider myself a pretty outgoing and likable person, and I was being told by the coolest girls I am “at the top of their list.” This is called bid promising, which is a huge faux pas in the sorority world, basically promising a girl a spot in their sorority without any proof. But I was excited and dumb, unaware of the impending doom and every 19 year old girls worst fear: rejection. 

After the first weekend of rush, I transformed into my most bubbly and relatable self ever, spending hours talking to girls until my mouth went dry and my throat hurt. It was a three day event for 8 hours each day, and comparable to torture. UD sororities do not haze, but they will create a very sweaty and emotionally draining atmosphere for anyone involved in Greek life. I was so convinced that I made a good impression with these hundreds of girls that when it was time to leave I was skipping out of the building. How embarrassing.

I came back the next weekend grinning ear to ear, covered in fake tan and perfume, excited to receive my list on what sororities were dying to have me back. After an anxious 30 minutes our Rho Ghams (mentors) finally emailed us our list, and I will never forget this instant drop in my gut. I could not believe my eyes, almost every single sorority had dropped me. This was so unimaginable to me, I had never felt like such a fool in my life.

I didn’t want to cry in front of all of these girls, but at the moment everything went black. I ran to a supply closet and dropped to my knees crying, truly convinced that this was the end of my social life. My Rho Gham said “I couldn’t believe it when I saw the list either. I don’t know what you did.” What could I have done? I told her “I have had my heart broken many times in my life by boys, but never by girls.” Okay, very dramatic, I know. 

To add salt to the burn, my best friend at the time stopped speaking to me because I didn’t get into a good sorority. People made up fake stories on why I got dropped and painted me to look like an asshole. Frat kids would even make fun of me to my face about it. The worst part was genuinely not really knowing why it happened, no one knew the truth and if they did they would not tell me. Eventually I stopped looking for answers and accepted this as blatant character development, and that it was. 

A year later I finally got the courage to poke fun at this situation because it no longer felt like the end of the world. I sat down at my desk and filmed a TikTok playing a mean sorority president, highlighting some of the hypocrisy I experienced in college. The next morning I woke up to 1 million views, with comments from so many girls who resonated with this character, and felt like they have been spoken to like this too. The point of the President of Kappa Raffa is to shine a light on the shallowness some women experience in their early twenties. 

@gracejohanna

when you realize being in a sorority is scary 😳 #sororitycheck #sorority

♬ original sound – gracejohanna

This then built my confidence to start playing around with different situations like virtual recruitment, or kicking a younger sister out of a bar because it was disrespectful. These videos started harnessing millions of views, and I soon created a brand of this fake sorority Kappa Raffa. The funniest thing to me about my content is how I recreate this phony niceness that mean girls tend to have before they jab you with a backhanded compliment. If you feel like it is relatable, the President of Kappa Raffa is loosely based on my own real experiences and my friends’ horror stories.

I am NOT denouncing Greek life at all, I think it is a great way to make friends and have great experiences. I think everyone should rush, and see the possibilities, but if it doesn’t work out it is okay because being rejected was the best thing that ever happened to me. And to the girls that made sure I didn’t get in, thank you! At the time what you did was cruel but you gave me the confidence to jumpstart a whole career. Sorry not sorry.

I now know who really did this to me, but that is a story for another day.