When entering the whirlwind that is college, you receive this unique experience you can neither simulate nor repeat. You meet all kinds of new people, stay out until 4:00 a.m., learn how to draft a professional email, and discover what it's like to live in a room with multiple people. You learn how to function as a normal human being under your own drawn-up set of rules, and it should feel awesome. Coming to college was a crazy experience for me because of all the huge changes, but perhaps the biggest culture shock for me was..."The Hookup Culture."

In high school, I had boyfriends. I wasn't very familiar with the concept of a "fling" because that's just not how my friends and I conducted our relationships. You meet a cute boy in your World History class, you tell your friends about him, and then you begin the uphill battle to get him to ask you to homecoming without being obvious that you NEED it to happen. You slow-dance and smooch a little and then somewhere soon after, he asks you to be his girlfriend and then you DIE of infatuation and date forever. I don't know, is that not how it happened for you guys?

I wasn't as naive as to think that this kind of thing would continue in college. But I wasn't expecting what I immediately began to encounter A LOT. There's not a lot of real dating in college, just a slew of drunken hook-ups where the need to obtain background knowledge of the person doesn't really apply.

Maybe this just comes with the unique lifestyle of a college student. Really late nights and copious amounts of alcohol were things I didn't have in my life during my high school years. But this perpetually awkward stage of being together without actually being together, I just wasn't prepared for, and still don't love the idea. God forbid you form feelings for someone you're hooking up with. It's a tragic situation that I found myself in way too many times my freshman year.

There are many exhausted arguments over whether or not the hookup culture is a fruitful thing. Many say that this lifestyle has created a generation of people who completely have forgotten how to actually date someone. In a recent VOGUE article about the hookup culture, Karley Sciortino says that "according to a recent barrage of news stories, apps like Tinder have turned dating into a dehumanizing form of online shopping, catalyzing some sort of sexual Armageddon and the death of courtship itself."

This culture may make casual sex too easy and might stunt the meaningful connections we're making with our intimate partners. But others, who are in support of the hookup culture, see it differently. This culture has the ability to increase one's sense of self-confidence and freedom. It is the satisfaction of a human's biological need for adventure and pleasure.

All in all, it is up to the individual on whether or not they choose to indulge in the hookup culture upon arriving to college. Sex and love are different and separate needs, and here, they are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

As far as my experiences go, the hookup movement presented itself to me as something prevalent and perhaps unavoidable. It was hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that just because someone wanted to take me back to their dorm didn't necessarily mean they would want to get coffee the next morning or learn about my little sister. I found that if I was looking for some kind of monogamous or committed relationship, I was going to need to look a lot harder. Just be aware that the hookup movement exists,or it will throw you romantics for a loop. High school was a totally different universe in many aspects, and dating is definitely one of them.

Be careful. Do NOT seek validation through these kinds of experiences in drunken environments, and you'll be fine. Don't utilize it to fill some sort of emotional void. But also, have FUN. Use these preexisting conditions to gain experience or to create memories you can tell your roommates the next morning and smirk about while you're not paying attention in class.