#IncomingSophomoreAdvice

Yay! You’ve done your time as a “freshman” and can ditch the negative connotations that the most basic underclassmen status can socially bring (I still love you, freshman year!) But, it does sound a bit older to say sophomore.

By this time, break-ups have happened: with friends, boyfriends, family—to you or as a witness. Whatever you didn’t do last year and you regretted it, remedy it this year—someway, somehow. 

Now, the older guys don’t seem as big of a deal as they did when they were freshman (at least to a sophomore girl’s eye), but to parents, it’s the same. But, you’ve had a year of personal or secondary experience in the big leagues to aid in guiding you. All I can think about with guys and sophomore year is getting to ride in a guy’s car; on dates, to and from school, it’s getting to witness someone else’s knowledge, action, and the only place that is truly theirs. (If you don’t have your own place, your car is the closest thing you’ve got.)

I didn’t even think of it freshman year, but dances! Enjoy going shopping for that dress and all the accessories that are *you.* There’s nothing like girl power in going with your friends, just like there’s something about getting asked and picked up. At least at my high school, you were lucky if you could bear the sight of the moves that went on without completely gagging and hold back from using a women studies textbook to whack girls over the head with. 

Here’s the time when you get to pull up to school driving yourself. Sometime between freshman year and now, a lot of people take driver’s ed. Great luck on your tests! For me, it was an unexpected place to make friends; four years later, one of my closest friends is one of the girls I hung out with there.  

I could go on about the responsibilities and risks of driving, period, and here’s another place where I’m about to say things you know, but I can’t feel okay unless I know I’ve told you (:

• Stop signs mean nothing to other people—people will blow through those things either for visual ignorance or internal arrogance. Drive defensively! 
• Always check the backseat of your car before you get in, especially at night, to make sure no one is there. 
• I’m sure you have a family and friends to get back to—no text, app, or phone call is worth sacrificing yourself. This goes for human distractions as the music’s bumping and there’s a car full of you. 
• Keep a set of jumper cables, a blanket, water, jackets, and extra pants. While I’ve only had to use these for an impromptu picnic (had my blanket!) and getting caught in a rain storm, it was this last item that made me glad my dad made me gather up all those things and keep them in my trunk; I can’t imagine getting stuck by myself and facing the elements alone.
• If you get a flat tire, reject all unknown help, accepting only that from those you know. There are too many cases gone wrong in this book, which I highly, highly recommend for vigilance and to keep as knowledge, but don’t want anyone to become paranoid to the point of not enjoying their life and neither does the author. Safety is an issue I feel all young women need to be well-versed in and self-defense one to be apt in.

Academically, it’s the year of the PSAT, the first AP classes, and learning even more about what you’re interested in. You can apply for college scholarships even now, and for that, grades do matter. 

Volunteering is a great way to more deeply explore options; find where you’d most like to spend your time, on your best and worst day, and hopefully you’ll find the perfect fit. Spend your time wisely and extract all the lessons you can in every experience! 

Again, I stress enjoy this slice of youth. I hope you’ll go to those football games, find someone special’s eye in the hallways or head turns in class, and unearth even more that you didn’t know about yourself.  

My sophomore year: Smiling infatuation. Blissful euphoria. Gasping heartbreak. What seemed like eternal injustice. Wanting to be a doctor. Falling in love with microbiology. Driving alone for the first time to with my sister’s Disney movie soundtrack playing. CHIPOTLE. The six months nobody-but-family-in-the-car state driving rule. AP tests. The food fight.

Das Mädchen: The Single Girl's Fight for Decency

There’s a debate within the German language over one word: “das Mädchen.” German—a gendered and case-based language—has three possibilities: male (der), female (die), neuter (das), plus the plural (die) on each of these. Every noun must be gendered.

The controversy over “das Mädchen” is the fact the word means “the girl,” but the gender is neuter—the same gender used for objects:

“das Buch,” (the book)

“das Telefon” (the telephone)

“das Bild” (the picture)

While "the boy" always receives the male, "der Junge," a woman doesn’t get her femininity in the German language—that “die”—until “die Frau” where the definition simultaneously means “the woman” and “the wife,” but it’s best known as the latter, as it’s an address for married women; “Guten Tag, Frau Ziegler,” for example. I find this struggle true in reality as I live the life behind that unmarried noun.

There’s respectability in marriage; there’s no more debate over abstinence, the issue of clothing’s modesty and immodesty speaking for your personality (“prude vs. loose” are the two options we seemed to get categorized in) is like it dissolved away long ago, and you’ve finally got the guy.  

Until then, you’re fighting for your respectability, against the expectations others have placed before you, and the guy as a single girl. With marriage, the overwhelming idea is wholesomeness, goodness, and propriety; that you were worth putting on a ring on. It’s only here that across the board, sex is allowed, pregnancy is welcomed, and cohabitation is expected. (Can the term “slut” still exist in the realm of nuptials?) No one’s questioning your character anymore; if you got the ring, that says something. That’s changing “girlfriend” to lifelong, everyone knows you’re together, partner in child-rearing, with-you-for-everything-that-comes “wife.”

But until you get to that place, the guidelines are invisible and for this, tricky. You want to share your affection (wherever you slide your piece to on the physical spectrum) with someone special, but how do you stay exempt from that branding title “slut,” “whore,” “ho,” and the branches of these labels? What do you do when a guy is stunned you won’t sleep with him on the first date (besides considering walking out the door) and you look around and didn’t know this expectation actually existed? How do you get a guy in 2013 if that is your stance?

And that makes me wonder sometimes how I’m ever supposed to date. I refuse to waste my youth with the paint on my bedroom walls as my only eye contact, but I won’t board a train just because it rolls into the station. Inadvertently, it’s like you’re penalized for not settling—for whatever reason, you’re rewarded with loneliness.

Why am I punished for who I am? Why must be this payment for what I want?

In every new possibility, you must draw up who you are and see if you’re accepted. Oh, it is and *should* be the other way around, too—you have a choice in choosing or passing on him. But, when you’ve already put your bid in, it’s a two-way street to see if it’ll be accepted in return. In our decisions and responses to opportunity, we are having to constantly prove our decency and then be commended or punished for it. We have to prove we’re not like every other girl.

Arguably, yes, it’s a great to have that test that is whether you’ll be accepted for who you are. You weed out who’s willing to go the distance, who is the good guy; you have a guy who you’re not having to bend for, but rather, he’s bending for and respecting you.

But, the process to get there (right now, at least) seems long, dull, and solo. It seems half the battle is finding someone with real romantic potential. Then once you *finally* get there, it’s like, am I really going to risk losing them by objecting for who I am? How could I come this far for it to be vain?

Who you are can be anything: someone holding the realm of sex, the place where physical and emotional affection meet, until marriage; someone who vows to be asked out in person, because that’s asking for bravery; someone who doesn’t think quitting in the middle of texting is okay; someone who won’t sacrifice their religious relationship, belief, or creed.

Whatever you’re holding out for, I hope you cling to it. It’s cynical to say that the cause will be around longer than the guy, but I’ve found that to be true and was overwhelmingly thankful I didn’t abandon it afterwards. But, sometimes the emotional and social investment for what you really wanted will be in vain and the reality is it hurts. And there are a thousand different ways to describe that pain. Why did it have to come this far not to work out? Why was it allowed to happen in the first place? How the you-know-what am I supposed untangle myself now—and when I don’t want to?

I’m waiting on my own return for holding out. When will the reward for my “wise” choices come? When will there be no more distance in its travel, in physical space and time, but finally be delivered to me?  And rather, when will he, who I only know in one date, conversations over cardio, the most coveted iMessages, and in believing faith, decide I’m worth it? In every moment, I pray he’ll meet me where I stand.  

Is dating just a series of informal presentations of who we are in conversation that lead to marriage, the master key to take part debatable activities and leave behind having to answer all questions of our image? Is that where the battle for owning our decency ends?     

You're Not My Boyfriend - Yet: Dating Vs. Going Steady

There was an important distinction made in health class a few years ago--there is a difference between "dating" and "going steady." Dating is going out and getting to know people, while going steady is an exclusive arrangement made verbally to only date each other.

This was revolutionary to me! In my experience, the moment you started talking to someone, you were committed; the adjective, "committed," to some extent in your own interest, but the verb "committed" as in, you "commit" someone to an institution. In the most silent way - or an intangible one through the content of texts, number of them, degree of temperature in your in person encounters - you were slowly sinking - into infatuation or feeling stalked. Either way, you were deepening the waters with someone, making getting back to shore difficult.

In my definition of dating, I must make one thing clear. Hanging out with and getting to know people over text and in person builds a social and emotional connection. But, it’s the physical aspect that I don’t include in this dating advocacy. Holding hands is taking the association between two people from friends to romance; kissing is a sure fire method of transportation between the two destinations. Beyond these are intimate activities that bring people to a new level and to play with that deep of emotion attached to someone’s physical expressions isn’t fair.

The struggle I find is how do we implement this definition? Today, it seems so organic to begin texting someone, hang out with them, and it's an almost unspoken path into being boyfriend and girlfriend - and if you do find yourself not interested in that person, you're already breaking up (or dealing with similar repercussions) or if you end up being interested in someone else, you're cheating or were never faithful to begin with.

And have you ever noticed how difficult it is to get out of something once it's started? Even getting someone you thought you liked, but don't (or never did in the first place) to stop texting you is like getting your hand out of glue; it can't be escaped by pulling away once, is extraordinarily messy and there's that frightening moment when you think you'll never get away.

The even greater difficulty I find in trying to live this definition is trying to do it as a girl. If we go out with more than one guy, it looks slutty both ways. For a guy, he goes out with more than one girl and to the said population, he looks like a jerk - but to his gender counterparts, he's the man! With grins and extravagant handshakes, he's the best kind of player.

Dating is non-exclusive social activity. What other place can we go out and see what we like and don’t? Must it be a string of micro-serial-monogamy? Or, can it be a contest—the common interest, personality matching, and chemistry rounds—with all of them lining up before our heart?

It seems like adults can do this; Cosmopolitan magazine and romantic comedies have shown us it easily exists! Dating “this” guy and then “that” guy…But the theory hasn’t been put into practice in the young adult market. Can it?

They say morals are eroded, generation after generation – yet, it seems our generation can’t keep from judging multiple interest. For this to occur within committed relationships, I’m thankful we see the infidelity! But, when we see a girl go to Chipotle one afternoon with a guy and then another guy at Starbucks later, and finally seeing her Friday night at the movie theatre with someone else, what color is our judgment?

All these different potential guys and just her? It’s all too easy to look at this girl and think she’s slutty; she may not be physical with them, but “the fact she talks to that many guys…” (especially if we’re assuming that from dipping the filter of “hanging out” into her social pool she gained them, how many more guys is she talking to?).

And what are the guys’ views of this? Despite the scientific and pop culture references that men like more partners than women, I believe guys go into these dating scenarios expecting to be the only one to her. Are they fine all standing up equally to be hers? Do they know about each other? What will happen to them and her if they find out—and others do, too?

If only we all lived by the same definitions!

Do we experiment with our reputations and juggle more than one guy? Verbally address our level of commitment on the first date? Can we find someone our age willing to be 25 and just “casually date?”

Today, do we really get more than one choice in getting to know someone? It seems at some level we’re all expecting commitment; if you text me, you’re into me; if you hang out with me, you’re investing time; if you do any of these things with me, it’s adding up. Then, if you’re interest doesn’t up being there and you want to back out, you’re backing out of your investment—with social and emotional penalties. If “dating” is non-exclusive, are we actually getting to do it? How can we, though, if we can’t get out to something we haven’t committed to?

But, why don’t I get a choice?

There’s so much pressure to get it right on the first try; to talk to the guy and have him be it. Because, if he’s not, we now have to find an escape route that doesn’t make us look “loose,” rude, or any other awful ambiguity. Why can’t we be young and have fun as we “shop?” Why are we only allowed to reach our hand out once for what we want?

We are committed to no one but ourselves until we verbally agree to someone else; we owe them nothing but our honest will. The only thing we owe others is respect—for their emotions once we know it’s not there for us and keeping a strict physical boundary until monogamy; maybe just max it out at “hugs” until you know who your #1 is. For “going steady” in becoming boyfriend and girlfriend, that verbal commitment must be there; that way no one can say they didn’t know later; it’s consenting to this union and acknowledging your capacity that you knowingly and willingly went into this.

For “dating,” while the association is still friendly, bringing up the subject of relationships and dating gives an opportunity to say, “I’m single, but really enjoying going out and getting to meet new people!” To fight that already skewed idea of “dating,” mentioning the physical boundary could help illuminate our true intentions. Ultimately, the true definition of “dating” needs more press; that we may experience every possibility instead of the social reprimanding for finding our journey into love. 

What are your ideas of implementing the true definition of dating? How can we casually do this?