Have I found The One yet? No. Not yet, not yet. If you see her reading on a bench or giving her bus seat to an elderly man, tap her on the shoulder and let her know I’m out here — J. P., the Single Pringle, the 100 percent-wholesome wheat bread, the full snack and a half. Let her know I’m out here walking.
More and more of my acquaintances seem to be having better luck finding love. Marriage has slowly been seeping into my social circles, snatching up more of my acquaintances. It’s caught a girl I sat on the bus with in middle school, a couple study buddies, an old Bible study leader, some former high school peers — you get the idea. The list stretches farther almost every time I check Facebook. None of my closest friends are engaged or married, though, and I certainly don’t feel pressured to find The One before I graduate. It’s just wild to think that humans the same age as me have found another human that they feel confident enough they can spend the rest of their lives with, in sickness and in health and all that.
According to a Facebook Data Sciences study, about 28 percent of married people attended the same university as their spouse. I can throw out a list of confounding variables about this study to prove I paid attention in Econometrics, but the point stands that college is a popular way to meet your significant other. Twenty-eight percent! I think that means even if they don’t know it yet, some of my friends might have already met their fiancée and they’re unknowingly slung on a trajectory towards engagement.
Meanwhile, I’ve been conducting my own study. I’m polling my friends to see if I should get a Tinder. After extensive research, I’ve decided on no. Definitely not. At least probably not. Well, maybe. Yeah, I’m a strong maybe. How much does it cost again?
I’m conflicted about it because what am I even looking for in this fourth year, man? Do I try to have enough fun to compensate for my relatively tame three warm-up years? Or should I be on the safari hunt for a soulmate? Am I looking for The One or just someone, anyone?
I think Tinder is a fast and cheap way to squeeze in some more romantic fireworks before graduation. But wise men say only fools rush in. I think they still say that. I listened to a podcast once about people who knew how long they had to live, and one of the guys said “I don’t have time to rush anymore.” That stuck with me. Only fools rush in. I don’t have time to rush. These phrases rattle in my brain as I walk.
Don’t rush, I tell myself. Don’t be foolish. Don’t get on Tinder. How many soulmates do you think meet on Tinder, John? What are you going to find there? What do you really want? Come on.
But then I come back swinging for the other side. Isn’t now my time for foolishness, in the last hour of this low-stakes blink of a life phase — college? Sure, I know that kids, or rather, “adults” my age are getting married, but I know a lot more who are still out here still in the single stratosphere. Now’s my time. I’m not rushing, I’m catching up!
Maybe I’m overthinking it. I do have some more free time lately to chew on things. At the end of the day I don’t fear too much that I’m never going to find somebody to marry. If I crunched the numbers right, 72 percent of people didn’t even go to the same college as their spouse. I could be one of those people.
As for what I’ll do with this fourth year, I’m going to hold off on downloading Tinder for now. I still have faith in more organic ways to meet crushes. For now.
John Patterson is a Life Columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at life@cavalierdaily.com.
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