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(10/03/13 3:04am)
You know that one person you’ve hooked up with so many times you can’t even count it on your fingers anymore? But you two are not, never have been and most certainly never will be anything serious. It’s the person you call at 1 a.m. when you’re in the mood and no one else is around. It’s the person who you sleep with in between relationships. You’re a boomerang and this person is the one you just keep coming back to.
But you’re not drawn to them. Because they’re somehow not the tragic love of your life that you can’t seem to let go of. In fact, chances are they’re the exact opposite. You don’t like this person — like, at all. Otherwise, you two probably would be together. The fact is, they probably don’t want to be with you either. No, this hook-up buddy of yours does not derive from a feeling of unrequited love or a lack of closure — it’s pure convenience, accessibility and maybe just a way to fend off boredom.
So, after you’ve gone through a tough break up, they’re the perfect no-emotions way to get over your old flame — by getting under this old lame. Or the party you’re at is starting to resemble Noah’s Arc and you’re the only one not paired off, so you give this person a call. Or, it would just take too much effort to flirt with and seduce someone else, and this one is a total layup.
Sure, all of those are valid reasons. But I think it’s more than that. The reason we’re so quick to revert back to an old hook up instead of to fool around with someone new is that, by doing so, we don’t have to increase our number. We don’t have to add another name to that list we keep in our iPhone notes. We go back to the same utterly vanilla hook up again and again because we get to have sex without having to add on another sexual partner.
I believe that there is still something inside of us that hates the idea of that number getting higher and higher. We want to say it doesn’t matter. But we can’t help that feeling we get when asked, “what’s your number” and the answer is more than we’d like to admit.
It’s a funny dichotomy, because at the same time we don’t want to rack up umpteenth partners, but we want to be having as much sex as we can. We want to walk into a hook up and totally wow in bed with all kinds of tricks, but we don’t want to admit (even to ourselves sometimes) that we’ve gotten our practice from a slightly large sampling of people.
As sexually liberal as we might think we are, sex is still a big deal. We may like to think that sex can be casual, and while in many ways it can be, it still means something. Think about it — isn’t it the first question you ask a friend when they tell you they hooked up with someone? “Did you guys have sex?” If they didn’t it’s kind of like, “oh no biggie,” but if they did, it’s monumental. The first time you have sex with someone, not only do you add one to your number, but your relationship to that person changes. For the rest of your life, even if you never see them again, they will always be a your sexual partner.
So, by having sex with someone you’ve already had sex with, you’re avoiding all of the inherent side effects of the hook up. Nothing changes. It’s the easiest way to satisfy one of our most basic desires without any of the residual feelings or changes. You’ve been there done that, literally, so what’s the harm in doing it again? Sometimes, we don’t want sex to mean as much as it does, and if you’ve done something once it’s less of an event to do it again.
We may not even realize it as we’re walking back to that person’s room again (and noticing that their wall decorations haven’t changed since freshman year). At that moment, we may be wondering why we are doing this again. But in the morning, when we wake up feeling pretty good from our night of pleasure and don’t have to worry about having another person on campus we feel slightly awkward running into at a meal, it makes perfect sense why we went back, why we’ll probably go back again and maybe even again.
(09/12/13 1:13am)
Nothing says possibility like the first day of school. With each autumn, we lucky youth are given the opportunity to start from scratch. In third grade, it’s new crayons, in high school it’s new sneakers, and now, in college, it’s new everything. New classes, new dorms, new faces, new sushi bars in Crossroads. Not to mention the influx of 626 freshman, who are completely and utterly new to the rest of us.
And since we’re all overachieving Midd kids, we’ve just spent our summers doing amazing things, like saving orphans in Ghana, climbing Kilimanjaro, curing cancer at the Mayo Clinic, or writing about condoms and erectile dysfunction at Cosmopolitan. So, with three months full of new and amazing experiences, we’re all coming back a little bit new too.
But since this is a sex column, and since I’ve practiced writing about love and lust all summer, of course I’ll be focusing on one thing in particular: new hookups. The question is foremost in everyone’s mind: Who will you be locking lips with tonight on Atwater’s overcrowded and slimy dance floor? (R.I.P. ADP.)
Have you been thinking about it all summer? Or maybe you’re utterly surprised at your newfound attraction for So-and-So who looks really good with a tan. Or perhaps you’re reserving your judgment until you’ve gotten a chance to scope out the first-years.
So while that excitement is overwhelming, it’s not always rainbows and lollipops. What if the girl you’ve been dreaming about all summer has flown across the Atlantic with almost every other junior girl for a semester abroad? Or, maybe you fell head over heels for a senior last year, who’s graduated from the Middlebury bubble. (Sigh, been there.) Or perhaps all you can think about is that SOB ex who broke your heart last spring, who you’ve been trash talking and hate-texting all semester, but now that you’re back in Vermont you really want nothing but to kiss and make up.
Have you made a new school year’s resolution for hooking up? “This year, I’m only going to sleep with someone if we’ve hooked up sober.” “This year, I’ll only sex-ile my roommate if the guy is really, really hot.” “This year, I’m going to spend more time interpreting Shakespeare than his text messages.”
Whether you’re looking for your future spouse (we all know the Midd marriage stat) or just someone to pass a weekend with, everyone’s coming into this year with an expectation – a new expectation.
Freshmen, these first hook ups are your first firsts, unless maybe they already happened at orientation, but either way these are the most exciting. You are beginning the whirlwind that will be your lives as sexually-active college students.
Sophomores and juniors, you’re in the nebulous zone – not the new kids on the block, but still not the big kids. These first hook-ups are just another great way to punctuate the beginning of a brand new year.
And seniors, class of 2014, this is your last first hook up. Pretty scary, huh? Because when we graduate in 9 short months, we’ll be leaving behind us not only classrooms and dinning halls, but also the collegiate-styled hook up culture. Never again will we all be living in a one-mile radius of each other, consuming unhealthy amounts of alcohol, and living without supervision or responsibilities in the height of our sexual prime. When else can we be so reckless with our hearts and hard ons?
College hook ups are fun and exciting. They have the potential to lead to something huge, and they offer the possibility to lead to nothing. And never, never are they as highly anticipated or as thrilling as the first ones of the year. So enjoy it – and remember it. As it’s happening, catalogue it as your first first, the year’s first, or your last first. And even if you’re a bit black-out, ask your roommate to remember it for you, and then fill you in. Maybe it’s your first kiss with they guy you’ll marry, or maybe it’s your first and last kiss with that girl from your first year seminar. It doesn’t matter. It’s the year’s first hook up and it’s important. It’ll be Sunday morning’s brunch conversation, and it’ll also be how you remember the start to your freshman/sophomore/junior or senior (AHH!) year of college.
Brand new year. Right now, it’s a fresh slate. This weekend’s antics will be the first on the record. What will you do to kick it off?
(05/01/13 8:58pm)
As of today, there are 11 days left of classes, 19 days until finals are over and 24 days until graduation.
Which means only 24 days left of hooking up.
Somehow this realization — that our days, and therefore chances, are limited — must alter the general hook-up culture as the year draws to a close.
Some of us channel a “Max Keeble’s Big Move” mindset. If you can think back to this childhood classic, you’ll remember that 12-year-old Max takes actions with no fear of consequences when his family says they’ll be moving. Our school is so small, it may as well be middle school, and thus filled with hook-up consequences. You’re bound to see your weekend hook-up at a weekday meal. If you get rejected, you’re guaranteed an embarrassing encounter in the library cafe. And you can be sure that everyone knows the full play-by-play.
That’d be enough to deter anyone from taking a chance. Except, when you know you’re heading back home to just-outside-of-Boston tomorrow, why wouldn’t you? The usual post hook-up repercussions are no longer a concern. Don’t want to see him at brunch? Chances are he won’t show up in your home kitchen! Afraid she’ll be a stage five clinger? She can’t suffocate you if you’re on opposite sides of the country! We can afford to put ourselves out there, because if something fails, we have an exit strategy ... and three months to recover. But you might also remember that Max Keeble’s family does not end up moving, and poor Maxy is left to face the consequences. So maybe you remember we’ll be back, and you’re still cautious.
Unless you’re a senior. Because they’re out for good. Now is the time for them to lay all their cards out on the table, and thankfully Middlebury already has a socially acceptable convention to do so: The Crush List.
People study crush lists more than they study for final exams. Everyone’s scanning to find their name on the senior’s lists of people that they’d like to crush, and if your name appears on the list of someone you’d like to find yourself in bed with, you officially have the okay.
So the campus has an overall devil-may-care attitude, plus an urgency to get in every hook-up you wanted to before school ends. And on top of that, everyone is finally getting a little color and showing some skin. Put it all together, and what do you get? An incredibly sexually active campus. Midd Mayhem is more than just an afternoon Guster concert ... and it sounds like more fun, too.
But, I have to ask, what about all those people who want the consequences of a hook-up? What happens if you hook-up with someone you really like next weekend, and then you both fly off to different continents for three months? Almost anything that happens in these next few weeks, I would postulate, has an expiration date of May 26.
So what’s does that mean? Don’t hook up with anyone you actually like until September? Amidst the hormonal frenzy May creates for Middlebury, a new relationship just doesn’t seem viable, but you can still start something, right? If you’re lucky enough to find your crush’s lips on your own, I wouldn’t recommend stopping mid-make-out and telling him you have to wait until September. Because during finals week we need as much fun as we can get, and also that’d probably be a major turn-off.
We live in the 21st century, so just because you’re not in the same location does not mean you can’t communicate. And given the wanderlust of Midd kids, there’s a good chance that you two might end up in the same place at least once over the summer. So, while I don’t anticipate anyone who hooks up now getting engaged before school starts up again, maybe it can be the start -— the very slow start — of a relationship.
So I guess the moral of the story is that springtime in Middlebury is a time to do whatever you want, with as many or as few consequences as you choose.
(04/17/13 4:25pm)
If you’ve ever read a Shakespearean comedy, you know that a sure fire way to get the girl is to pretend you’re someone else. In fact, if it’s Shakespeare, you’re probably pretending to be someone else who’s pretending to be someone else, and one of these alter egos is almost certainly a gender bender. But that’s the premise: if someone isn’t going to like you for who you are, just disguise yourself and when you unveil your true identity they’ll already be yours.
Conventional wisdom tells us that Shakespeare is timeless. Further proof of it is that this pretending plot of his is a tactic people still use in courtship today. Whether it’s hiding things, smudging things or just plain making up things, it’s not uncommon for someone to be something they’re not … especially on a first date.
Now, unlike Shakespeare’s heroes and ingénues, rarely do we present ourselves under a full-on alias. Our transformations are much more subtle. We want to show our suitors our best selves, so we to polish up our own identities. We’ve taken our appearance and our personality and airbrushed them both.
But at what point does making a good impression turn into false advertising?
Take the simplest example, The Push-Up Bra. I know Victoria, and here’s her secret: those things aren’t real! In fact, a few years back the lingerie store introduced the Bombshell Bra, which adds two cup sizes. Talk about padding the truth! In As You Like It, Orlando falls in love with Rosalind on sight, but I imagine he would have been disappointed to discover that Rosie had stuffed her bra.
How about the way we act? I am not the only girl who has ever ordered a salad on the first date when she is seriously craving a burger. Or there are guys who pay on the first date when they firmly believe that, in the 21st century, splitting the check is best. If you’re misrepresenting such basics as appetite and cash flow, how do you expect your date to get to know you or fall head over heels for you?
And when does slight exaggeration or a little white lie become not so slight or little? In trying to highlight our greatest attributes, I think we sometimes make ourselves nicer, richer, funnier, smarter or just plain cooler than we are. The illusions can start out small: you’re on a date with a guy who’s big into alternative music, and because one time your friend played you the song “Two Weeks,” you spout out “Oh me too! Do you listen to Grizzly Bear?” But what if that one comment implying that you’re just obsessed with Grizzly Bear convinces this adamant indie enthusiast that you two are soul mates when the truth is your iTunes is filled with Top 40 hits. Sounds more like a tragedy than a comedy to me.
These examples are minor, even silly; they do not belie your true self in any real way. But the point is, this seems a slippery slope. The standard we’ve set follows one of the Bard’s most famous quotes: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” If dating protocol allows and anticipates misinformation or even deception, then when do we finally know we’ve met the real person and not merely a character?
But here’s what I wonder. Are we doing this solely to impress our date, or is part of this tendency to mask the truth a way for us to fulfill our ideal selves? Maybe it’s less because we admire these personas, but because we are afraid of revealing our selves and not making the cut. While “To thy own self be true” is great advice, it’s not exactly easy. Few things are scarier or more vulnerable feeling than putting yourself out there. And a first date is the ultimate judgement.
So when you’re on a date, remember “all that glitters is not gold.” Proceed with caution – don’t forget that some of the qualities in this potential love interest might be part of a persona, not the person. But also remember, all that’s gold, glitters. Let what’s really gold about you do the glittering and have faith that if they like you, they’ll like you for you. And then, you don’t have to pull a Kate and change who you are when your husband tries to tame you. That’s miserable for both the tamer and the shrew.
But hey, if you really like the person you’re pretending to be on dates and it’s working for you, go for it. All’s well that ends well, right?
(03/14/13 4:00am)
There are endless proverbs about relationships. “Love is blind.” “You never forget your first love.” But what about this one: “Absence makes the heart grow fonder”?
Is it true? Does being apart make a relationship stronger? Or does distance cause it to slowly deteriorate? A long-distance relationship poses an entirely unique set of problems that you don’t face when you’re dating someone who lives on your hall.
I believe that, in a good relationship, you’re dating your best friend. He’s the person to whom you want to tell the details of your day. You want to share with him all the little victories, like when you run an extra mile more than you plan, or make an awesome dinner creation in Proctor.
But he’s not here. A major aspect of your life is somewhere else. There’s this feeling of here and there, creating an internal tug-of-war that’s forever in a stalemate. And you’re scared that one day the rope – or yourself – might just snap in two.
Sometimes you don’t think about it. But sometimes, it weighs on your mind and every thought ends in the wish: “I really should write my history paper, and I wish he was here. I’ll go to the lib after dinner, and I wish he was here. I’m just so exhausted, and I really wish he was here.” There’s also this witching hour, about one a.m. on a Saturday night, when the campus starts to resemble Noah’s ark. You’re dancing silly in a circle of friends and then wham! You turn around, and everyone is coupling off in pairs of two. And here you are, one without her two.
It’s not a case of temptation. (If it is, that might be a good sign to reconsider what you’re doing). But instead, it’s just missing them. Sure, you’re dying to be kissed, but not by the stranger on the dance floor. Only one person will do.
And you start the night knowing that it’s just not going to happen. For your friends who have boyfriends at Midd, they know that come one a.m. they’ll be going home with their guy. And for your single friends, there’s the uncertainty and excitement; there’s always the possibility that you could be taking someone home, and that’s a fun incentive for the night. But you — you know you’re night is going to end at The Grille followed by an episode of Modern Family. And wishing he was there.
So yes, long distance has its obstacles. But obviously, I wouldn’t continue to be in one for almost two years if it was all sadness.
While it would be nice to have your guy involved in your quotidian activity, there’s also something wonderful about the distancing. If you need an escape, you have one. If you need a more objective opinion, you’ve got it. Your life is one entity, but there is some separation of church and state. Back to proverbs, there’s that old saying “don’t … you know … where you eat.” To have your relationship distanced from all of the daily stresses in the life of a Midd kid can be a sanctuary for you and a saving grace for your relationship.
And if you want to talk about excitement – nothing compares to the anticipation of a visit, a reunion. It’s almost like a first date all over again, butterflies and all. In a long-term relationship, being comfortable is a blessing, but it is nice to still have that fresh spark of excitement. So in this way, the LDR is a best of both worlds.
But here’s the truth of it all: “nobody ever said it was going to be easy.” And that’s for all relationships, whether you’re states, dorms or hemispheres apart. So the question to be asked when there’s any struggle in a relationship is, is it worth it? If your answer is yes, it doesn’t matter. If you’ve found someone who’s worth it, someone you love, the heart will grow fonder, absence or presence. People have these gut reactions to the idea of long-distance — that they’d never be able to do it — but it’s just because they haven’t found the person they’d be able to do it for. When it’s worth it, ending it over a matter of miles is as ridiculous as ending it because he’s allergic to strawberries.
Long distance is just another challenge a good relationship can overcome. Because “love conquers all,” including gas mileage.
(02/27/13 4:52pm)
I was dancing at Atwater last weekend when some girl took over the DJ station and put on “I Knew You Were Trouble.” The whole party began to the sing – or more accurately scream – the lyrics to Taylor Swift’s latest hit.
This song is incredibly popular, obviously because Ms. Swift is the iconic it-girl of the moment and because no one can resist a good beat drop. But I’ve come to a new hypothesis. Girls like this song because under its bubblegum beat, it’s pretty easy to relate to what Taylor’s saying:
A lot of girls, for some reason or another, tend to be attracted to a**holes.
Evidence is everywhere: movies, literature, history and, of course, music. As annoying as Gigi is in He’s Just Not That Into You, you can’t help but sympathize with the feeling of being inexplicably attracted to the guy who won’t spare you a second glanc. Henry VIII had six wives, all of whom he divorced or beheaded. Don’t you think later wives might have noticed a trend? One of the most classic heroines, Jane Eyre, can’t help but love Rochester, even after their wedding is cancelled because he happens to already be married to a woman he keeps locked in his attic. And we all know how the song goes: “I guess you didn’t care, and I guess I liked that.” You liked that?
It’s not just pop culture. I see girls obsessing over jerks in real life every day and needless to say I’ve been there too. Of course I know I can’t stop this century-old trend in one article, but I can’t help but question: why is it like this? Why do jerks get the girls and nice guys finish last?
We’re all attracted to confidence, and for good cause. People who are confident usually have reason to be so: they’re smart, they’re successful and they’re hot. We’re attracted to a certain swagger; if someone believes they’re awesome, we’re likely to believe it too. But there’s a fine line between confident and cocky. What happens when what we perceived as confidence is actually arrogance or entitlement? Now they’re going to treat us like we don’t matter, and, since they’ve already roped us in with their “confidence” we’re not going to be quick to walk away.
And there are always the excuses.
“Well, he’s not texting me because his phone died and he has an iPhone 5 so none of his friends have a charger and his roommate has his girlfriend over so he can’t go back to his room. Duh.” Or, “well he hooked up with her last night because he thought he saw me hooking up with that guy from my chemistry class I was asking about the midterm, plus, she totally forced herself on him, he had no choice; he totally didn’t want to.”
With a little imagination, it’s easy to find justification and convince yourself that he really is a nice guy.
This is Middlebury. Everyone here likes a challenge. And there is nothing challenging about a guy who buys you roses and takes you to Black Sheep Bistro and never so much as flirts with another girl. Where’s the fun in that? … Right?
Well I think we like the challenge because what we want is that flower-bearing meal-buying monogamous guy, we just want to have to work for it. Or, maybe we want to be able to say we did it. We changed them. Because they liked us so much, they changed all of their ways to impress us. It’s Extreme Makeover: Boyfriend Edition.
But these are all just musings. I have no answer to my question. Taylor knew she was getting into trouble the minute she got to that party, and I think a lot of us have a similar experience. It’s all counter-productive, but it’s been this way since Jane Austen, and I don’t know if it’ll be changing anytime soon.
This tendency seems to affect all of us, but there is an end in sight. Every girl goes through her bad boy phase, but I think most of us come out the other end. For every 10 a**holes on the dance floor, there’s at least one nice guy out there who’s going to treat you like you deserve.
And here’s the bonus: if nice guys finish last, that must mean when the lights go out, they let their girls finish first.
(02/13/13 10:30pm)
Remember Valentine’s Day in elementary school? You’d come home off the bus beaming, with a shoebox full of cardboard rectangles sporting Disney characters, comic book heroes or cuddly cats, and — hopefully — a handful of Hershey’s kisses and heart-shaped lollipops. Everyone brought in a bumblebee “will you BEE my valentine?” card for each and every classmate and so, by the end of the school day you had 20-some-odd valentines to call your own.
But somewhere along the line, as we graduated into those god-awful middle school years, our valentine celebrations and traditions changed. Bringing in a card for everyone suddenly becomes geek status. It’s not necessary to dress up in pink dresses and heart-print socks. And unless you’re a Mormon or John Tucker, you can only have one valentine.
In fifth grade, it’s no big deal. If you happened to get asked out at lunch period on Feb 12, maybe you’ll buy your beau a candy bar and call it a holiday. But other than that, Feb 14 is really just another day of the week with a good excuse to eat sweets.
But then: braces are disappearing, zits are clearing up and girls are making their first trips to Victoria’s Secret Pink to buy lime-green-leopard-print 32As. Pin the tail on the donkey is replaced with spin the bottle. Everyone’s getting slapped in the face with a bunch of hormones and the opposite sex’s “cooties” are suddenly kind of attractive.
So what does this mean for Valentine’s Day? Well for many, it means one thing. Pressure.
Yes, the carefree grade school holiday is now more stressful than the PSATs. And, unfortunately, as we get older the pressure only seems to get worse. On Feb 14, there are two kinds of people: those who have dates, and those who do not.
I have this theory that everyone spends Valentine’s Day in bed: either romping in the sheets with your sweetheart or eating a box of chocolates from your mom and watching The Vow.
But I don’t like this stratification. Why can’t some remnant of that elementary school mindset stay with us as we grow up? Why can’t Valentine’s Day be more like Halloween? Halloween is a communal celebration, a social holiday. So why can’t Valentine’s Day be like that too?
No, I’m not suggesting an orgy. And I’m also not trying to belittle what Valentine’s Day currently represents: a celebration of romance. It’s a day to remember why you love your significant other and then to show them just how much you do. And how could a hopeless romantic say no to that?
So of course I have a sweet spot for this love-centered holiday. But why so much pressure to have someone to celebrate with? Why does V-day have to be limited to strictly date night, and why is it that we feel somehow lesser if we’re flying solo? Why can’t we observe this holiday more broadly?
At the risk of sounding horrifyingly cheesy, and also quoting the Gap’s holiday campaign, love comes in all shades. So this Valentine’s day, I challenge us all not to focus on the kinds of love we may be missing, but to remember all the kinds of love we have. Friends, parents, siblings, pets. Just because you don’t make out with them doesn’t mean they don’t deserve some appreciation for their love too. Plus, you don’t have to blow any money on new lingerie to celebrate with them, and they could make a great shoulder to cry on when The Vow has you sobbing.
Be a glutton for Valentine’s this year. Even if you do have a traditional valentine, don’t stop there. Embrace your inner second-grader and spread holiday cheer everywhere. Who knows – maybe today, a day devoted to love, is the best day to find new love. Maybe Cupid is feeling generous; after all, it is his special day.
And if you’re still not satisfied, and a lack of a valentine has still got you feeling down, which is of course understandable and valid, remember this: all the chocolate and candy will be on half-off sale tomorrow. And nothing, not even Cupid, is more powerful than chocolate.
(01/17/13 2:32am)
Winter term: One month, one class, one man?
We’ve heard it a million times before. New year, new you. Sure, it’s an exciting maxim, the idea that 2013 is a fresh start and that we can accomplish all we wanted to but didn’t do in 2012. Go to the gym; eat healthier; call grandma once a week. And for the relationship junkie: find a boyfriend.
At Middlebury, January is more than the new year, it’s the legendary winter term. The campus has an entirely different vibe than any other time of year, but is this an atmosphere conducive to starting a new romance? Is winter term the monogamist’s friend, or foe?
My first instinct is to say friend. Winter term means more chances to go out. The more times you go out, the higher the probability you’ll talk/dance/make-out with someone promising. And if you do, you don’t have to wait an entire week to talk/dance/make-out with that promising person again. With weekday parties, you can see them the next night and the night after and the night after without any fear of becoming a stalker. Ergo, the more often you’re going out, the more likely you are to continue talking/dancing/making-out with this promising person, which can lead to exclusivity, and eventually the cherished hooking-up sober.
But that’s just my initial thought. Because once I start to really think through all that is winter term, I begin to realize that in many ways, starting a relationship in January seems nearly impossible.
Winter term has a different psychological effect on everyone. For me (of course) it’s the romantic thought process. But for some, Winter term means a time to experiment with polygamy. For those, going to more parties means hooking up with more people. winter term becomes a very valid justification for doing whatever you want, for partying harder than ever and for making choices you might not have made back in October. With the overall campus spirit wilder than usual, winter term can suddenly become the worst time to settle down.
Or is it? I’m still not convinced. Maybe, even if we’re all partying like it’s 1999 or pretending we live in the Tomorrowland Promo, deep down under our layers and layers of Patagonia, Winter Term has us yearning for something a little more sustainable.
One reason winter term is different than fall or spring is because for once, Midd kids have the luxury of free time. With one class, and usually a class with very little homework, there are hours in people’s schedules that are unaccounted for, obviously a factor leading to the gluttonous amount of parties. But no matter how much we’re channeling that state-school attitude, no one can maintain a buzz, 24 hours a day for four straight weeks.
So, the amount of time that we’re not studying or partying has exponentially increased. But you can only watch the How I Met Your Mother box set so many times. With all this extra free time, I think it’s easy to realize how nice it might be to have a significant other to re-watch the series with you (if you can find someone who can tolerate “How I Met Your Mother”). Plus, it’s freezing out! And in my humble opinion, the best way to stay warm is body heat.
I have to believe that people are hooking-up more in winter term than usual, if for no other reason than that they finally have the time. For some, that means hooking up with a large sample size of the student population, but for others that means hooking up with one person exclusively. You just have to find someone who’s on the same page as you.
I’ve always thought of winter term as the College’s gift to us, a thank you for the arduous work we’re doing all year. In return, we get a month to relax and to finally do what we want, or who we want. It’s a month of possibility, a marathon of fun and a good way to kick off 2013 in the highest of spirits.
So here’s my conclusion: For the monogamist, winter term is always a friend. With benefits.
(12/05/12 9:29pm)
Tis the season – the season to hear Mariah Carey crooning her holiday hit “All I Want for Christmas is You.” It’s a sweet thought, the perfect gooey romantic message since it reminds us what the season is really about: Love.
But let’s be honest: no one actually feels that way. In reality it’s more like “All I want for Christmas is you … and that super thoughtful dazzling gift you’re going to buy me.” So while you’ll probably be the favorite thing your significant other unwraps this holiday season, I’m betting they’re probably going to want something a little more tangible too.
Getting the right gift can be tricky. How do you know if you guys are serious enough to be doing a gift exchange in the first place? And what do you get? How much is too much? This is getting stressful.
So in the tradition of Mr. Clause who makes his list and checks it twice, here’s a few bullet points for nailing that special someone … I mean, their gift.
1. For someone with whom you have just started hooking up, a token gift is a good choice. No gift at all says you don’t care, but if you give something too big, it might scare them off. It’s a fine line.
2. Do not buy socks. Ever! No matter how cute or fuzzy they might be. Socks = immediate friend zoning.
3. If you’ve been dating for a long time and you’ve done this whole Christmas shtick before, you might feel you’ve run out of ideas. Think outside the box – literally – a gift that can’t be wrapped. It can always be fun to do something totally crazy like an underwater basket-weaving and Thai massage workshop, and the good news is they probably have that on Groupon.
4. No one wants Santa Lingerie. While the red satin boxers with fluffy white trim and Naughty written across the bum might look enticing in the store, no one actually looks sexy wearing them. There is no need to taint the Santa myth by bringing him into the bedroom.
5. Awkward moment: You obliterated your savings on a fantastic one-of-a-kind gift, and you received a $15 Starbucks gift card. This is slightly heartbreaking and pretty embarrassing situation, and how can you possibly respond? Well every gift deserves a thank you, and this one probably deserves a reminder that your birthday is coming up soon.
6. Awkward moment #2: You got the expensive gift, you gave the gift card. Simple fix: Let them know the rest of their gift is on its way, just a minor shipping delay. Then get home quick and overnight something great from Amazon.
7. Time management folks. You do not want to catch yourself in the mall on Dec. 24 hustling through hectic last-minute buyers. You might get trampled under the feet of the infamously over-eager shoppers. Or worse, you might only be able to get out of their with a pair of socks.
But don’t get too stressed. Because while you might be terrified of buying a bad gift (because when someone says “of course I’ll love anything you get me!” they’re lying), the search for a good gift can be fun. And when you find that perfect something, you’ll feel like a million bucks even if you only spent $19.99.
(And a note to those of you who celebrate Hannukah: Since I have no personal experience celebrating the festival of lights, my best advice to you would be to reread this column over eight times and hope for the best!)
Happy holidays to all!
(11/14/12 11:05pm)
We’re a small school. And inherent in that are various characteristics and ways it affects our daily lives. You’re forced to talk in classes capped at 15. Our size affects our academic lives, our athletic lives, our social lives, our extra-curricular lives. And, notably, our dating lives.
So what does this mean for a panther-on-the-prowl? Well if Johnny Lee was “looking for love in all the wrong places,” I guess you could say that we’re “looking for love in all the same places.”
Because how easy is it to fall into a pretty steady routine here? Running from this class to that practice to that club, our days easily become regimented. And, I’ve noticed that weekends don’t offer much variation either.
When it comes to finding a potential hook-up partner, your choices are limited. As a first-year, it might not seem so right away, because you’re constantly meeting new people and everyone is full of possibility. But by the time you get to be a junior, it feels like you’ve gone to the Nordstrom’s End of Season Sale a day too late, and all that’s left are dresses in outlandish patterns, shoes that would be too small to fit an elf and hats that no one could wear outside of a Gatsby themed party. And in most cases, it’s not even that luckier and earlier customers have weeded through your potential partners first, but that you have weeded through them. Maybe he hooked up with your best friend or worse you hooked up with his best friend, and you’d hate for your kissing style to be conversation over a casual game of Super Smash Bros.
But here’s the biggest characteristic of hooking-up at a small school: You can run, but you can’t hide.
If you made-out with someone on a sweaty Atwater dance floor and would rather not see him the next morning as you’re battling the hangover from hell, you can’t be positive you won’t. You could run into them at the waffle machine in Ross, searching for an empty carrel in the library, picking up a package at the mail center. There’s no sea of faces for you to get lost in. Just like you can’t hide in the back of a classroom if you didn’t do your reading, you can’t hide from a one night stand if you snuck out of his room at 6 a.m.
But that’s cynical me. Romantic me, however, can’t help but ponder: Maybe the qualities that make hooking-up at a small school difficult are the same ones that make it wonderful?
So there are fewer options: well, think of it as boutique shopping. You could go to Nordstrom and have to search through racks and racks of clothes to find something you like, or you could go to a boutique where all of the products are high quality and after one rack the dress of your dreams jumps right out at you. Midd kids, I like to think, are the highest quality. And so, instead of weeding through thousands of dudes, meaning thousands of disappointments for you, you have a much smaller number of boys (or girls) to skim away until you find The One.
And maybe you can’t hide, but if you don’t want to hide you can’t get lost either. If you walk home from a party absolutely ga-ga over the guy you were just kissing, you can know with certainty you’ll see him sometime over the next week. And it’s totally organic. You don’t have to stalk that guy you danced with and didn’t know his name because, 1) you probably knew his name, and 2) you’ll run into each other naturally, eventually.
Even though it can be hard to not get frustrated with what seems like a lack of option or an inability to disconnect your hook-ups with your day-to-day life, I would argue that it’s a little price to pay for what a hook-up can become. Midd kids have a pretty high chance of marrying other Midd kids. Maybe that’s because our admissions does such a good job of picking those 2,500 students, that they’re all the most eligible bachelors and bachelorettes of the collegiate world. Maybe Johnny Lee should be looking for love at Middlebury. Because God knows once he finds her he’s sure to see her again, and again and again. And again.
(10/31/12 8:31pm)
In the olden days, dating began with a process of courtship. There was an emphasis on chivalry, and a girl expected to be wooed in order to be “in a relationship.” In the 50’s, in order to be “going steady,” as they called it, a boy would have to give a girl his high school ring or his fraternity pin in the process of “getting pinned.”
These days, though, things are a little hazier. Courtship can often be distilled to a sloppy make-out on the ADP dance floor or a drunken text. But hey, maybe this isn’t so bad. Change and progress are good, and we do tend to look at the past with rose-colored glasses, assigning innocence and purity where it may not necessarily belong.
But the real problem is that with this new system, one key detail becomes very unclear: How the heck do you know when you’re actually dating someone!? Try following this guide:
1. The Dance Floor Make-Out: Also abbreviated to DFMO. This abbreviation also works for Drunk as F%*& Make-Out, which works since the two are usually one in the same. A DFMO is sloppy, public and rarely pre-meditated. Your partner can be anyone from your best friend to the kid you’re crushing on who sits behind you in Econ, to someone you’ve never even seen before.
2. Going Home Together: This is a tricky one. It comes either weeks or minutes after the first DFMO, or, rarely, you can skip the first step altogether and jump right into phase two, which never works. If things stop after stage two, the “relationship” can also be referred to as a One-Night-Stand, or just a Mistake.
3. Making Plans: This stage is slightly harder to recognize, and is a little blurry in definition. Making Plans is when your hook-up partner calls you early on in the night to find out if you’re going to an Atwater Suite or to Palmer. You no longer just happen to run into each other at a party and hook-up out of convenience; you’re planning to see each other.
4. Hooking Up Sober: This is it. This is when you know you’re relationship is going somewhere, that you’ve reached the big leagues. Your relationship has finally become real, and all your silly fantasizes are now somewhat legitimate. In stage four, you guys are hanging out on weeknights when there’s not a red solo cup in sight.
5. And finally, Dating: You are no longer just the girl or the boy, you can add the suffix of friend and you are now the girlfriend or boyfriend. You can eat meals together and hold hands in daylight. You can introduce him or her to your parents at Family Weekend and you no longer have to stress about the proper allotment of time before you text back.
And it all stems from hooking up sober. This, I believe, is the distinction between relationships and hook-ups, between lust and romance. Each has its benefits, but for a hopeless romantic like me, the first time you guys kiss without feeling you might throw up, or wake up together without a blasting hang over – that’s when the second phase of excitement begins.
Along with all those awkward moments, there are the moments of happiness, the sparks of falling madly in like with someone and then maybe even using the L-word. It’s exciting and fun and full of awesome mystery. So maybe girls aren’t walking around with boys’ rings on their necklaces, but that doesn’t mean courtship is a thing of the past. Like everything else romance has changed with the times – but it’s still here, and I don’t think, or at least I hope, it’s going anywhere anytime soon.