The hookup culture at USD is just awkward.
The college lifestyle is an interesting and unrealistic one. We go to class a few days a week, for a few hours a day. We do minimal work and spend more time at the bars than we do studying. Being students at USD, most of us literally live on the beach and spend our weekends tanning on our porches and riding our beach cruisers down the boardwalk. Sounds perfect, right? The bottom line is, it pretty much is perfect. But for most of us, there’s one thing missing: dating.
The issue with life at USD is the hookup culture. It is a sporadic, ongoing thing that leaves many of us girls upset and always feeling like something is missing. I have noticed in my few years here that it doesn’t change; it just branches out a little more when you turn 21 and can go to bars.
There is about a 50 percent chance you and your best friends are Eskimo sisters. If that isn’t awkward enough, there is an even higher chance you and your sorority sisters are hooking up with the same guy and have absolutely no idea. In fact, when word finally does break that you’ve both been making out with the same guy, you may become best friends. It happened to me. At such a small school like USD, it becomes incestual.
There really is no such thing as dating at our school. I am a junior, and I have yet to go on a date with a USD boy. The few who do are either in relationships or super lucky. Dating is no longer a thing in our college lives. For some, it’s a random make out session at a party or a dance. For others, it’s going home with someone from a bar. And the worst part is our school is so small, so you are bound to see them on campus weekly if not daily.
The hookup culture is messing with us girls. It’s forcing us to feel as if having feelings for someone is a bad thing. We’re forced to think pretending our emotions don’t exist is normal. We pretend to not care because we don’t want to look desperate or clingy. We’re brainwashed to think dating is overrated and making out with multiple guys in a weekend is okay. We need to open our eyes and realize we’re allowing ourselves to ruin the dating culture that many of us love the possibility to have.
Sure, I think we go through a wild phase when we get to college and are finally on our own with no one telling us what to do. But it should only be a phase. Dating is fun. Going to dinner and movies and letting a boy treat you well is something we should all want. We should expect manners and for boys to treat us like princesses.
Because we are princesses.