By Kim-Vi Sweetman
Elm Staff Writer
“If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want to learn, go to the library.”
We’ve all heard it before, and probably in high school. You would hear it, laugh, make a crude joke, and muse about how wonderful your college life was going to be. Maybe when you envisioned your college life, you saw opportunities: for new friends, freedom from your parents’ watching eyes, a chance to express yourself in ways you hadn’t tried before. A blank slate, ready for you to smudge with your shiny new dry erase markers.
Maybe part of that blank slate was a new relationship?
How many people do you know that entered college in a relationship, but their “significant other” was at a different school? How many of these couples broke up? I’ll be the first to admit that it takes a lot to carry on a long distance relationship, even for a short while. If you are one of those people in such a relationship, props to you. I have no clue how you do it. So, why the break up? If we are so convinced that everything will still work out, even with the distance, why do two hearts grow apart?
Maybe it’s because we do learn a little at college. We start to reevaluate what we want from life, how we’re going to get it, and what kind of person will fit into this picture. Maybe there is some knowledge to be found outside the library – or at least, for those of us who came here intending to get an education, not a boyfriend/girlfriend. In a world where increasing pride is taken in being a working woman, why are there still girls who go to college with the purpose of looking for a boyfriend?
Scenario 1: Sleep, Good Grades, and Social Life. You can only pick two. It’s another thing we’ve all heard before entering college. The combination you pick is your own choice, and so long as it’s not just sleep and a social life, everyone seems to agree. Imagine Scenario 2: Grades, Job, and Boyfriend/Girlfriend. Now which two do you pick? The connotation of picking a boyfriend/girlfriend over a job or good grades is a negative one. So maybe it’s time we changed these scenarios from “pick two” to “manage them.” After all, if college and the library are supposed to be teaching us skills we will “use in real life,” shouldn’t we be able to handle the best of everything? And if you can’t manage them…
We’ve probably all heard the first-mentioned phrase while here at Washington College, too. Only maybe more literally, as appears (or rather, hears) to be the case in Sassafras and Chester. Just how thin are those walls, anyway? Isn’t that something we’re supposed to experiment with, though? Our sexuality? If college is a blank slate for you to experiment on, doesn’t that include sex? Thus the first half of the phrase comes into play; or maybe you’re actually learning. Either way, I’m pretty sure more than just the library is involved.