Wait, What’s a “Big”?: A Guide to Big Little Week

Big Little Week is a notorious event on college campuses.  You can always tell when Big Little Week is happening by the amount of glitter, decorated canvases, and completely cleared out shelves at Hobby Lobby.  For those of you who don’t know what I’m referring to let me explain.  Big Little Week is a shortened term for Big Sister and Little Sister Week.  All sorority chapter members receive their very own Big Sister sometime during their pledging period.  The Big Sister is someone that guides your through the initiation process.

Most sororities make it a surprise for the new members as to who their Big Sister is.  While the whole point of Big Little Week is that at the end you receive a Big Sister, there’s also A LOT of presents involved.  But the presents aren’t like the ones you receive on Christmas.  Most of the time new members don’t have a lot of decorations or apparel related to their sorority yet because they’re still fairly new.  So most of the presents are decorated canvases to hang on walls, painted greek letters, letter shirts, sweatshirts, basically anything to do with the sorority.  So each day of Big Little Week (which usually lasts 5 days) the Little Sister receives different presents everyday from her Big Sister.  By the time they get to the last day, which is when they find out who their Big Sister is, they have so many presents they don’t even know what to do. Most Big Sisters leave clues with the presents so that their Little Sister can try and guess as to who they may be.

While the presents are always fun, the best part of the week is the last day.  This is the day when you finally find out who your Big Sister is.  To this day, one of my favorite memories was getting my Big Sister my freshmen year.  It’s exciting to be able to have an older sister in the chapter that you can go to for anything you may need.

Even though the terms “big” and “little” are usually used to describe a size, just know that if you ever hear the phrase “I just love my Big/Little SO much”, they’re actually referring to a person.