On Saturday, I filed into one of Rose’s study rooms to talk about love, dating and relationships.  I was a little surprised to see just how many people came to this discussion because love is a bit of a messy topic to talk about. For all the pop culture surrounding love, dating and relationships, you would think that we would all have a clearer idea about what it means and how these sort of relationships work in college.

Talking to the other Rose scholars was particularly illuminating because I don’t usually talk about these things to people I don’t know well. Transfers and students who went to different schools highlighted how different relationship culture is between different schools. They mentioned that as Cornell students are particularly career-oriented and very driven, less people seem to be in relationships. But of course, before one can even be in a relationship, they have to meet potential mates. We talked about how much of meeting people nowadays is electronic. People meet other people through social media and online dating apps. These platforms also provide key insights into how interesting the other person finds you. Virtual flirting by tagging each other in memes or texting someone fairly consistently seems to indicate how attractive someone finds you. The overall consensus was that the virtual dimension of relationships hinders information that would otherwise have been gained from face-to-face interaction, such as body language.

I left the discussion really thinking about how everyone deals with doubts about relationships, dating and love. Because everyone has had different experiences with the topic, it can be easy to feel that other people know more about finding love than you do. But hearing all the other Rose residents talk helped me realize that we’re all just as clueless and that’s okay because it is normal.