Last week’s seminar with Andrew and Cynthia gave me quite a lot of food for thought. Throughout the past week, I’ve found myself thinking back to other students’ comments on relationships at Cornell.

Many students mentioned that they felt that Cornell’s culture was not conducive to dating, and they notice much fewer couples here than at other schools or in other parts of the country. I think there are two primary reasons for this.

The first is Cornell’s intense academic and career-oriented student population. Most Cornellians were admitted to Cornell and manage to maintain their student status here by prioritizing academics over other parts of their lives. The rigorous academic expectations and tendency of students to commit to time-intensive extracurricular pursuits has resulted in a campus culture where students have much less time for dating. Like many people at the seminar mentioned, relationships take time and work. When students are already so spread out, and prioritize these other aspects of their lives, it’s extremely difficult for them to date. Many students I know (mostly engineers) don’t even have their lives together enough to eat three meals a day, get more than 5 hours of sleep, or exercise regularly. How can they fit another person’s needs into their lives?

The second is the general culture of the northeastern United States. In the northeast, talking to strangers is frowned upon, and people are generally less friendly than in the west or the south of the country. In addition, public displays of affection are heavily frowned upon. I’ve spent seven years of my life in high school and college in the northeast, and I saw more “PDA” in my two months in Hong Kong than in all my years in the northeast. And Hong Kong is already quite conservative! As a result, many students are likely underestimating the prevalence of romantic relationships at Cornell. Without public displays of affection, relationships are just less noticeable. The dating situation at Cornell is probably not as dire as we all think!