Writing this article sucks. There’s no other way to put it. As a lifelong hopeless romantic, acknowledging what I’m about to talk about in this article feels like accepting defeat, even when I truly don’t want to. But I feel like after so many conversations with my friends about this in the past week, I wanted my fellow seniors to know that they’re not alone in the feeling.
I got into my first (and only) long term relationship of college about a month and a half into my freshman year. We dated off and on until the summer after he graduated the summer before my junior year. I’ve spent the last year and a half since then in situationship after situationship, not finding the long term partner I was in relentless search of. And now I’m still here, plagued by “wyd” snaps, class crushes, and guy best friends who inevitably need to “confess something” to me. And I’m EXHAUSTED! I love my independence and just having fun with friends every weekend, but to my core, I am a relationship girl. But with graduation just over three months away and major life changes on the horizon, is there even a point?
I know it’s not just me in this boat. Every senior is preparing for their next step, no matter what it might be. For some of my friends, the engagement and wedding timeline is next up. A lot of people who have spent the last few years in a relationship are planning for a proposal in the next year and a wedding after they and/or their partner finish graduate school. On one hand, I find this so shocking; our frontal lobes aren’t even fully developed and you haven’t had time to explore the world. But then I remember just two short years ago I was in the same boat, planning for a ring on my finger before finishing my masters program. So there’s a whole population of seniors who have obviously are not looking for love, considering they already found it.
Then there’s the group of seniors who have already accepted that they’re going to a new city next year and don’t even want to find anything serious. And who can blame them? When you only have until mid-May to set up a solid foundation before long distance, its hard to want to commit. And many seniors don’t even have a clue which city they’ll be going to next. While I luckily secured my post-grad job back in October, the majority of students are still deciding which graduate school to attend or haven’t even started applying to their entry level positions.
On top of all that, despite have a fairly sizeable student population, JMU always ends up feeling like a bit of the small world. When you’ve been at this school together for four years, you’re always somehow connected to the other members of your class. Whether it’s your former TA’s boyfriend or the president of another club you met while making rounds at student organization night, you somehow seem to know everybody. Oh, and it’s not like there’s an older class to explore anymore, so your only options outside of that are the classes beneath you. If you’re into girls, the problem is less daunting, but when there’s already a maturity discrepancy between males and females of the same age, dating younger is practically begging to suffer for the two to three months you’re “hanging out”. I would know. Unfortunately.
And even if you do find a gem from the younger classes, do you really think they’ll want to do long distance when they are even more uncertain than you about where they’ll end up after graduation? There are certainly exceptions, but they are not the rule. Once again, this is speaking from experience. Unfortunately.
So if you’re looking for love in this semester, your last semester, of college, I’m not going to tell you to stop. But if anything, the search shouldn’t be that hard, because at the end of the day, love is all around you! Your family, friends, classmates, teammates, pets, professors, that one barista at Starbucks who is always working when you’re there! Spend this semester soaking up all of the love and positivity you already have in your life and live in the present. And who knows? They say romance always finds you when you’re not searching for it…