Remember back when walking around the sticky middle school hallways holding hands was a cute little date? Or when your mom would drive you to the movie theater to see a “scandalous” PG-13 rated movie and you’d meet up with a cute boy you met at school in fifth period English. The movie would start and the entire time you wouldn’t know what to do with your hands or if you should look and see if he was enjoying the movie just as much as you were. Then he’d put his arm around you and that was already way too intimidating. Everything was so simple and you would giggle and tell your best friend about everything that happened after when you got home.
When you hit high school things started to change. There were more expectations, more drama and everything seemed like it was going to last “forever”. Your friends knew everything about your relationship and it probably bugged your boyfriend a lot. You would laugh at how silly middle school dates were and how mature you were to go on “fancy grown-up” dates to restaurants or the football game. Now that we are in college, a lot has changed.
Dates are no longer actual dates, but closer to “hang out sessions” and/or Greek events. They consist of hanging at a frat house, playing video games in one’s apartment, or hitting up Mia Za’s for some “fine Italian cuisine”. In college, actual dates are rare to come by and should be treasured at all costs. They're all about hookups and walk of shames, instead of just holding hands and carrying your books.
However, college dates are not as bad as they may seem, they are fun and casual, which means that a lot of the pressure is off. It is a great way to meet all kinds of people through barn dances, date bar crawls, formals, etc. In a lot of ways though, middle school and high school dates were so incredibly fun. They were stepping-stones to adult dating life, which of course, helped step up your overall dating game in college. Even though college is fun, I miss the sweet, little innocent dates that came with flowers and engraved necklaces with your name inscribed. It’s just not the same. I interviewed a few of my sorority sisters in Phi Sigma Sigma to find out what their middle school, high school, and college dates were like.
“He called me on the house phone to ask for homework help. He was in my gym class, and we held hands as we walked around doing exercise. He also picked me a daffodil, so basically we were dating” – 6th Grade Emily Block, Junior in Integrative Biology at UIUC
“During college, I found my date for barn dance, while we were boarding the buses to leave. I ran across the street toward a group of guys, explained my sad story of losing my previous date, and they debated it for a second and finally one guy volunteered and it was the best night, no joke”- Emily Block
“He was a sophomore and I was a freshman, he had jut gotten his drivers license and my mom wouldn’t let me get into the car with him until she met him first. Our date consisted of taking pictures in the Mac store on the computers” – Rachel Lunkes, Sophomore in Special Ed at UIUC
“In middle school, I dated this boy for all of the school year and then when summer came around, we just stopped talking for like four months. He didn’t have his own cell phone, because his mother wouldn’t let him have one, so I couldn’t even contact him. I assumed we were broken up, so I started dating this other boy at the end of the summer. I guess we weren’t broken up though, cuz the other boy got super mad at me and said I had cheated on him. Whoops haha.” – Kaylin Laslo, Junior at UIUC
