March Madness is officially underway in every sense of the phrase. This is the time of year when my academic performance suffers considerably and my caffeine intake increases threefold. My room starts looking like a Friday on a Monday. If I’m confessing all my sins, I’ve done my laundry once all semester. Don’t freak out, I haven’t been wearing dirty clothes. I just buy new stuff on Amazon and have it shipped to me. I love America. (Also the Internet).
All this madness has left me no time for boy scouting. I realize this is just a massive excuse, but seriously, how do all those girls find boys when there are so many books to read and tests to study for? I would try to be less of a nerd, but at this point there’s no turning back. I have a compulsion to study, and I just can’t fight the feeling.
Although I didn’t have time to actually get out of my room and talk to people, I did find a few minutes in the wee hours of the morning to Google “How to find guys in college.” I swear, the research I do for this column is destroying my Google reputation. If I keep getting Match.com ads in my sidebar, I might have to resign.
It was worth it, though, because the results of my search were surprisingly helpful. The College Crush, after being mean to me about my perfectly valid question (“I’m sorry, did you mean college or your small agrarian community? College is the easiest place to meet guys maybe EVER.” Hey!), informed me that location is everything. I assessed my usual haunts and realized I might have found my problem.
My favorite campus spots and activities:
1. Lakota — Since I can’t sacrifice studying, I need to exploit my study time to meet guys. Studying alone in a coffee shop is probably one of the worst ways to do that. I don’t care how many times it happens in a book or a movie; people do not meet at coffee shops. Tell me if I’m wrong, but if I approached a random guy in Lakota, he’d probably think, “When is she going to stop talking so I can finish my book? It was just getting so good,” instead of “Wow, she’s adorable. We should totally date.”
2. Yoga and Pilates — In “The Princess Diaries,” after Princess Mia gets beat up by soccer balls in gym class, she says, “I’m a yoga-doing, synchronized-swimming, wall-climbing-type girl. My hand-eye coordination is zero.” Amen. Sadly, those aren’t exactly excellent boy-meeting sports.
I’ve grown to love these places and things, but it’s time to shake it up, if only to broaden my chances of meeting new people.
Look out, I’ll be on the prowl in:
1. The laundry room — There’s really no better place to strike up a conversation. It worked (well, sort of) for Neil Patrick Harris in “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog”! Plus, if we’re in the same laundry room, we obviously live in the same dorm and are likely to have more in common than the random kid reading his biology textbook in a coffee shop.
2. The Quad — Since it’s absolutely beautiful outside, I’ll spend some study time in Peace Park and on the Quad, where most of the student population ends up at some point or another. Lots of foot traffic means lots of opportunities to make new friends! My mom would say I should study outside the business school or the engineering building, but I like to give equal opportunity to all. Don’t want to miss the pre-med kids.
Hopefully adding these locations to my repertoire will make me a better boy scout. That sounds really creepy and kind of stalkerish, but I promise I’m not going to be waiting around every corner, ready to pounce. Let’s call it strategic positioning. I’m just going to keep my eyes open. I’m actually writing this while sitting on a column, and I see heads turning already. I don’t even think it’s the guy riding a unicycle.
