We all know that infamous saying: What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. For Akron students, it might suit us to say: What happens at Manny’s, ends up on ZipsBarstool. But does this proverb ring true for flirting class? Does flirting in class just end up staying in class or can it turn into an outside relationship? Is it a disaster waiting to happen or the start of a love story for the ages? We turned to three intrepid Her Campus Akron contributors for their thoughts and tales about flirting and dating with classmates.
Class Connection – Alexandria Mayenschein
In my opinion, flirting in class tends to stay in class most of the time. When I was a freshman, I had a group of friends from my Spanish class, and one of those people was a guy that I liked and flirted with, and I definitely thought he was flirting back. We would get lunch together after class and have these really great conversations, but nothing really came of it. I wasn’t even a hundred percent sure he liked me like that until I moved back home for winter break, and he texted me and told me he had this huge crush on me that entire semester, but he didn’t have the guts to ask me out; it was too late anyway because he was transferring to a different college. I think there has to be more than just flirtation for a relationship that starts in the classroom to work, which is how I ended up with my ex-girlfriend. We flirted both in class and indirectly on twitter before I asked her out, and we dated for about a year before parting our separate ways. There has to be a real connection for it to make a long-lasting relationship, in my opinion.
Unexpected Advances – Madeline Myers
Do you remember more innocent times when “check yes or no” notes were grand romantic gestures scandalized over at recess? For me, these times were not so long ago. My sophomore year of college, I took one of my core English classes taught by the department’s dullest and most ancient professor (I’m sure he is lovely in his personal life). The kid who sat next to me in this class had the same hyper, insecure, leaning-on-intellectualism for charisma aura of my ex. Once, while the professor droned on about Old English, the classmate wrote dozens of haikus about the ways he might off himself in the class. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I suppose he was trying to impress me. A few weeks into the semester, the classmate slid a ripped piece of lined paper onto my notes: “Do you want to get coffee and study sometime? Check yes or no.” Without thinking, I slid it right back onto his side of our shared table without checking anything. “Thanks, but I don’t think I have time.” This wasn’t a complete lie, but truthfully the thought of small talk with him who haikus was not a passtime I was inclined to pencil-in. No hard feelings, right?
Well…He literally never showed up to class again. Now, I’m not so full-of-myself to assume his absence was because of me, but I hope that wherever he is in the universe, penning humorless poetry, he knows I think about this post-adolescent “check yes or no.”
Mixed Bag – Emily Janikowski
I have a few experiences with dating with very different classes that have gone very different ways. Once, in a self defense class I ended up going on a date with a guy from class. The date was horrible. Turns out we had nothing in common besides both taking self defense and finding each other cute. That makes for a pretty awkward time, if you were curious. Then, I ended up sitting next to a really cool guy the first day of gothic literature, and we developed a really great friendship based on our shared interest in making sarcastic remarks about the class and our similar taste in movies. This friendship was able to develop into a relationship, and we dated for about 3 months before breaking it off and ending our friendship, too. While neither of these stories are really positive (no rom-com plot here, folks), in my opinion, dating in class honestly depends on what you have in common with the person. If you’re only talking because you have that class together and you wouldn’t talk if you ran into them anywhere else, that’s not a good sign. It’s also a matter of what you put in. Like most things in life, what you put in determines what you get out.