As the buzz of Rush Week dies down, a new wind stirs through the decorated pillars of the mansions on Sorority Row. Social Chairs flurry about in a whirl of phone calls, coordinated calendars and list of mingle-worthy fraternity houses. Girls hurry to raid through friends and sisters’ closets to find the perfect dress. Aldo and Steve Madden rapidly race to become the most visited sites on the House computer as the stars align and accessories fall into e-baskets across the Internet, coordinating to create the most magnificent ensembles. As parcels begin to pile outside the Greek lettered houses, one might just confuse it for Christmas Part II, but here instead at SMU we know that spring semester is quite synonymous with Formal and Mixer Season – with dance parties and events galore, these next few months might as well be the best present a social person could ask for!

However, just as the magic of Holiday Season comes with the slight stress of finding the perfect gifts for loved ones, the euphoria of a packed social calendar often gets momentarily jolted. And it usually happens like this: you’ve got an outfit a Bond Girl would approve, you’re almost ready to say “Mission Accomplished” and flop back down onto the ground in the midst of all those dresses you’ve tossed into the reject pile on your dorm room floor, when your roommate asks you a very horrid yet entirely relevant question, “So who are you taking as your date?”

You know that you could try reopening your haloed closet, but even you know that’s not an accessory you could find somewhere on a shelf. Shucks. You, my friend, have officially embarked on a journey that many fellow fraternity and sorority members are on at this very moment: the quest to find the perfect date to Formal.

Now by the time you become a junior in college, there turn out to be quite a few twists and turns to navigate before you even come up with who exactly to ask. See, with 120+ girls in each sorority, where each one is bound to have an ex-boyfriend or three on the “Kindly Do Not Invite” list, your pool of eligible potential dates immediately begins to drain. Other names continue to trickle out as you get to the notorious gentlemen who’ve relegated themselves to the “Cannot Hold His Alcohol” list as well as the “Will Probably Spike the Punch” list. While these are all relatively known names, you begin to stir through murkier waters when it comes to the question of unofficial relationships and other sorority sisters’ crushes. In a modern day dating landscape, there are more shades of relationship grey between Entirely Unattached Single and Truly Monogamously Committed than the number of ties hanging in Christian Grey’s wardrobe.

As you begin to trace each one of Cupid’s arrows across campus, it might feel as though the entire populous is either messily star-crossed or amusingly smitten. You’re probably beginning to wonder if you’d sooner find a unicorn in a tuxedo than a date for Formal. After all, the most important list is the unwritten one that continues to grow the more rom-com movies you watch: the traits of the perfect date. A truncated list for most girls seeking a date comes down to him getting along with your friends, being taller than you in your dream high heels, and - if you’re lucky – a good dancer.

When the night of the Formal finally rolls around, everyone looks glamorous enough to shine on the Academy’s Red Carpet. As you snap selfies and raise a glass to a grand evening you smile at your fellow sisters and their dapper dates. You can all now laugh about the commotion that had occurred a few days ago and the light bulb moment when you each realized that the “perfect date” did not have to check off all those silly boxes. So when you see your sorority sister laughing and taking silly pictures in the photo booth with her best guy friend or your other sister engrossed in a deep debate with that guy who sits next to her in her morning political science class, you can turn to your own date and chuckle to yourself that the most natural answer was probably in front of you all the way along.