4 Things I Learned Writing For A Sorority Website

Last December, I was excited to become a writer for a new sorority website. I had the chance to share all the wonderful things about my own sorority; it’s one of a kind in its vision and dedication to service in sisterhood. However, my excitement to share my growing sorority wisdom is being cut short and I’d really like to explain why.

1. In a virtual world, it’s easy to neglect promises.

It’s so easy to hide behind a computer screen and ignore people who message you on Facebook. That’s the beauty of the Internet; you can take as much credit as you want and leave the rest as anonymous hate. Honestly, the first thing this business told me was that they were serious about 1. Growing the website, and 2. Staying in touch with every intern writing for it. As a prime example of poor business management, there has been a complete loss of interaction between boss and intern. Personally, I see this as a lack of drive and desire to actually grow the website (a.k.a., promise No. 1) as well as pure favoritism for certain people (oh look, neglecting No. 2)!

2. The person with the power is the only person who is ever going to get paid.

Call me naïve, but I was really looking forward to getting paid a measly $10 per published article. Then, Mr. Boss Man added yet another stipulation: all writers get paid after writing and having five articles published (previous articles as an unpaid intern not counting towards those five). With only one out of twenty writers having the ability to publish articles, who do you think is getting paid the most (and probably at all)? If you said Miss Publisher, you would be correct. Gold star for you. I’d give you $10, but sadly I never had enough articles published for that to actually happen.

3. I should have jumped ship when I realized Miss Publisher couldn’t even follow basic grammar rules.

I’d like to think that this girl is as intelligent as all sorority women should be. However, I’ve seen too many errors in the simple matters of punctuation and capitalization to really see any form of college level literacy, which should be required as the ruling-writer of a website. Setting a good example means being the best or passing on the task to more qualified people.

4. Typing ‘I Quit’ on Facebook just wasn’t satisfying enough.

This entire thing comes off as immature or whiny but I do not care. I know the things I wrote were shared and read, so there’s been no reason for the people “in charge” to neglect publishing my newer articles. Such neglect is due to certain people only caring about their personal benefits (in other words, some people really just wanted to reach their five article quota in order to get paid). That’s not the way to run a website.

I’ll always be an avid reader of the Odyssey and TSM because they publish more than just lists, share current events, and have a set foundation of writers and interns who are notable for their work. For all the wannabes out there, you’ve got more work to do than most of you are cut out for. Don’t take offense – take action. There’s nothing worse than people who make empty promises and copy already done ideas. It’s easy to be unique if you actually put in effort, so why not give it a shot?