The Caste System of Dating

By: Christina Kostic
Posted In: Opinion

I remember being a young girl and dreamily watching movies depicting beautiful women in romantic stories of dating and love and thinking to myself: “I can’t wait to get older so that can be me someday!” I figured by the time I got to high school that my life would be like that of the girls in the movies, with playful flirting in the halls in between classes and magical dates that would defy the social boundaries of pretentious teenagers,where the outcast girl could actually have a shot with the hot football player. you know, similar to that of the 1990s teenybopper flicks that I grew up watching, such as “She’s All That” or “Clueless.”

However, I realized as I got older that the art of dating was nothing like what I had seen in the movies.

I come from a very small town where you go to school with the same kids from kindergarten up through high school graduation. I’m sure you know the kind of town that I mean. Needless to say, the environment wasn’t very conducive to dating. I couldn’t help but to view my couple hundred other classmates as some sort of extended family with whom I had grown up with over the years, and to get involved with any of them romantically would have been almost like incest, downright creepy.

And of course there were no attractive

foreign exchange students that came in halfway through the school year to grab my attention, as would have been the case in one of those cheesy 1990s teenage date flicks. Alas, my high school dating experience wasn’t at all what I had dreamed it would one day be. I was painfully shy in high school and had a very small circle of friends, none of which consisted of guys whom I would ever date. By the time four years were finished, I wanted to get away from everyone I knew and those who had known me as a younger more awkward version of myself, and commence my life as an adult.

Never one to be dismayed, I decided that I would leave California and go all the way across the country for school. Fresh start, new faces, the beginning of a different life where no one knew me: I was more than ready, and I would be a new me.

Call me na’ve, but similar to how I had learned what high school life would be like, I gathered what college life would consist of mainly from movies, and from my older sister’s stories.

Yet again, I was surprised. Life is nothing like the movies. how long does it take me to get that through my head? In the movies, college students seem so grown up; they are mature, they balance their school work and their social lives of parties and going

out on dates with someone that their friends set them up with, and everyone seems to relate on an adult level.

Or at least that was my view of them from a high schooler’s perspective. But once I actually got to college,I realized that it was like a continuation of high school. How is it that we all wind up in predetermined cliques and social groups when we’re all coming from different places and no one knows each other? It’s as if we have magnets inside of ourselves that attract us to the people that it is socially acceptable for us to be seen with. God forbid someone should try to date outside a predetermined circle!

I’m sure not all college settings are like ours, but I am talking about ours, with it’s limited student body and disproportionate ratio of male to female student body. My sister went to Arizona State University, a school that more resembles a small city than a college. In that type of setting, it’s actually possible to go a whole day at school without seeing a familiar face. It’s possible to ask the hottie in class next to you if they want to go grab a coffee, without fear of them having preconceived ideas of who you are because of the type of people that you call your friends. But here, we really don’t have that luxury.

I realize that after reading this article you must be thinking that I’m just bitter because I’m single. No, actually I’m not. anymore. I’m happily in a relationship with my boyfriend for over a year now, not from our school. But I don’t want to go into details about that. The point is, I remember what it was like to be here and to be single. It’s hard. Especially for those who yearn to be dating someone. It can get lonely hanging out with your friends who are in relationships,and you feel like you’re the only single one left. I have amazing friends who are single and would love to have someone to go on dates with, but this environment really isn’t conducive to finding new love interests. You either have someone in your circle that you’re interested in, or you don’t. There’s no going outside of it. Wow, déj