There are ups and downs to attending a large university. Con: you can cross paths with people who have definite potential to be your next boyfriend/girlfriend, only to never see them a second time. Pro: when you meet that boy/girl who mistakenly senses a mutual chemistry, you don’t even have to purposefully avoid them, simply because you’ll never run into them again. But since we’re amidst the remnants of Valentine’s Day, we’ll focus on actually wanting a relationship.
How do you go about meeting that someone? Of course, there are parties and classes, or as I recently discovered, Five College speed dating. Which of these have the most merit for a UMass student?
If you are of the partying, bar-hopping sort, you’re golden. Every Friday and Saturday (and increasingly Thursday) night, you’ll meet a new batch of people.
But if you don’t see beer pong and clubbing as synonymous with “fun,” your number of opportunities has been slashed in half. Meeting new people and establishing relationships is no easy feat, especially when you are a serious student at a city-like university.
If studying is more up your alley, you’ll be frequenting lecture halls and the library much more than frat houses. But is the lecture hall really the optimal place for seeking new social connections?
Prior to class, most students, if not completely immersed in their iPods, are studying for a quiz, finishing their homework or using the few minutes to catch up on sleep.
Plus, showcasing your wit and charm to make an impression on the strangers around you during lecture is not likely to float well with the professor. Most likely, the person who jumps at the opportunity to talk during class is probably not the fellow studious type that you are seeking.
Just your luck, that chatterbox may have “randomly decided to show up today because it occurred to me this morning that we haven’t had an exam in a while, so I was afraid that it might be today or something,” which remarkably, I have heard more than once. There have been countless times that have I seen somebody once in a lecture hall, and never again.
If you decide to bite the bullet and go to a party in hopes of meeting someone, chances are that you will meet someone who is there because they actually find it fun. A couple consisting of a hardcore partier and a person who suffered through a party just to meet someone are going to have some compatibility challenges in the future.
So, if the lecture hall is turning up nobody and the UMass party scene does nothing for you, maybe it occurs to you that you need another strategy for meeting people. But when speed dating, online dating sites, such as eHarmony or Match.com or even the “old school” personal ads in the newspaper come to mind, there is always a certain stigma.
For starters, the stereotype is that these services are not for young, hip college students, but rather a desperate last-ditch attempt at companionship for middle-aged people. Or they are for average-looking, unsuccessful, socially inept individuals who can only score a date by portraying themselves as beauty queens or, “Extremely handsome and outgoing SWM
