independent

It sucks. That being said though if you have a cool group of friends to block with it's alright.

Everything is basically impossible. You are cut off from everyone else in the social sphere of Duke - basically you will never be able to hang out with anyone from any frat, sorority, or SLG.

Your only chance to meet anyone are through classes, clubs, and others making it very tough to meet a large group of people.

I think my independent time at Duke I basically had one friend from my club who I'd hang with, and then a group of people in a frat that I went to. But if I didn't have the frat, I wouldn't have many people.

Ultimately, you can have your own friends if you ALREADY have them before your sophomore year. However, don't expect to make any friends with anyone in any frat or have a sort of prolific social life with those folks. All you really have are the people in your own little group.

Thus if you are independent, you will have to accept that you can't really expand your social circle a very large amount after sophomore year. And you better have a group or two of friends before your second year, otherwise you'll be left to try to meet people in class and stuff and it will be a nightmare seeing how little socializing you will ever do like that.

That's why if you are independent, you have to have your own groups of friends before second year. Otherwise meeting people in the very closed off community that is Duke will be only a few new folks every year making it impossible.

The people in greek life have thriving social lives with tons of people, whereas independents are cozy with a maybe 5-10 friends max or more in some cases, and will be unlikely to meet many more.

Basically, it is very hard as an independent and you will almost certainly feel isolated from everyone in the entire community. However, fortunately if you have your closer friends you can survive and be OK, but don't expect anything with 100s of people part of your circle.

Duke really sucks in giving people a chance to make friends, and Greek Life folks are basically happy in this impenetrable bubble of socialization while others kind of stay in their small niches and have very little of an expansive social life.