Dating in college is something of an anomaly in more ways than one.
For one thing, going away to college at a large school such as IU means living in a bubble of a world in which almost every one of the school’s tens of thousands of attendees is your age.
In addition to a common age bracket, living in a college town provides the luxury of living with people with similar goals and levels of education.
Throw in the fact that all but a rare and lucky few stay with their high school sweethearts through college.
You’ve got a dating pool that is vast and primed specifically for the college
student.
Many who seek romance, whether it be in the long or short term, relish the idea of finding someone they can relate to at multiple levels.
After all, when you’re surrounded by thousands of single people every day, there are bound to be at least a handful of people who share your own perhaps obscure interests, talents and views.
But is finding another version of yourself really the best use of this unique environment?
Commonalities lay a great foundation for building a relationship. Finding someone else who you can go with to folk shows, play badminton or lament the current political establishment may seem like heaven on earth.
However, I believe the undergraduate years are one of the only time periods in which it is easy to get to know and maybe even fall in love with someone who is completely different from yourself.
At the core, college is about learning and new experiences. These go far beyond the lessons taught in lecture halls and overpriced textbooks and primarily take place in residence halls, house parties and bars that we frequent. Often the most valuable discoveries come from the relationships we build.
At a time in which all of us in our late teens and early 20s are piecing together who we are, what we stand for and the things we want from life, the moment is ideal to learn from others.
Why not do it on a romantic level?
After graduation, the likelihood of dating someone with interests and backgrounds vastly different from your own drops as people begin to connect for “real-world” reasons, through jobs, professional associations, religious groups and so on.
Personally, some of the most attractive and endearing people I have met at IU are those with different majors, religious affiliations, political beliefs and native languages than myself.
These are people who I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about or even come into contact with had I not been immersed in the college experience.
Too often in college we group ourselves in subcultures based on greek affiliation, classes and clubs, though the setting is perfect for branching beyond the high school-esque social structure of compartmentalization and labeling.
Opposites don’t always attract. When they do, it’s one of the most interesting and enlightening experiences.
You’re forced to question why you think the way you do, and you’re given a new perspective on the world you probably would have never encountered before.
So take the old Golden Rule of college, the one that says to never be afraid of or hesitant toward new experiences.
Apply it to your dating life.
In the process, you may find out things about yourself that you never knew before.
— kabeasle@indiana.edu
