We all desire the most bang for our buck in college. AKA, don’t fall asleep in those thousand-dollar courses so you’re not paying money to sleep on a wooden desk. Whether you take philosophy or biology, any subject area can give you golden nuggets of knowledge about your love life, or even some social commentary for you to chew on. If you can pay attention for an entire eighty-minute lecture, you might just graduate a love guru.
1. History 101
In your basic history class, you’ll probably find yourself learning things you learned in high school all over again, like the love affairs of European royalty or the plot events of the American Revolution. With all those loveless marriages and royal affairs, how can you even expect someone to open a door for you? Remember, this doesn’t mean chivalry is dead. Most royal marriages (at least those important enough to make the textbooks) were performed as political maneuvers. There were knights holding doors for their ladies just a few blocks over, and you don’t need to expect any less in today’s world. If all else fails, take your lectures with a grain of salt and remember society’s 700 years of progression since medieval times.
2. Psychology 110
In college, you’ll suddenly find yourself living in a dorm with the opposite gender one wall away. Someone will inevitably approach you and ask if you’d like to “Netflix and chill.” In Intro to Psych, you’ll learn about anxious-resistant insecure attachment, meaning emotional attachment will happen. If that’s you, try to stay away from the one-night stands, even if it does mean giving up House of Cards.
3. Comp Sci 105
After a few semesters you may come to the conclusion that all of the thousands of students in your dating pool suck. However, it doesn’t take your resident comp sci geek to figure out which breaking-edge platform is the best for broadening your horizons. This one’s pretty easy: ask friends with similar goals as you (one-night hookups, long-term relationships, etc.) about their personal experiences with the strange world of online dating. Find out which apps (if any) are best for you and log on.
4. Philosophy 210
Your mid-level philosophy class should teach you that the most arbitrary concepts in life, including the definitions of words, are man made. Therefore, “defining the relationship” won’t mean anything unless you make sure the two of you are on the same page about it. Even if you can’t rock that bae title yet, they could still like and appreciate you. But if you crave the label, of course you should insist that you no longer be introduced as “the girl from my dorm.”
5. Biology 101
Turns out you forgot to take your science requirement and find yourself in intro-level biology in your junior year. Since leaving teenagerdom, you realized you can definitely gain something from this class. Exhibit A: the detailed pictures in the textbook. Between the multitude of photos and drawings you find, you should successfully answer any embarrassing or abnormal questions you have about the human body. And if that doesn’t help, turn to Google as always (just make sure you read the actual medical/informative articles, not the forums).
6. Philosophy 399
You broke a lot of hearts and went through a few rough patches yourself. How does what you know now help you evaluate future situations? Now you know you need to focus on your own happiness as you get ready to enter the real world. Whether you snagged a partner at this stage or not, you learned a lot from these college experiences that didn’t involve a grade. Your searching allowed you to gain something from every class you took that can apply to the scary world of college relationships.
Even if you don’t graduate as a philosophy major, you can still bestow upon future S/Os the multitude of knowledge you were graced with throughout your college years. Every course, every professor and every major will teach you something useful. Just think outside the box, which you can’t do if you fall asleep.
