Today is May 5th. Many of you are wearing sombreros and chugging tequila graduate in a few weeks, or even days. (Did I just freak you out!?) Thankfully I’m on a college quarter system, so I have one more month of bliss before entering the real world. But still, there never seems to be enough time these days for everything I want to do.

I want to tie up lose ends, check off more things on my bucket list, hang with my friends, take those last few exams, and maybe even make out with that hot guy in my Comm class. But despite all the things I’ve yet to do, I still know graduation is approaching. And like paying taxes or eventual old lady boob saggage, there is nothing I can do to stop it.

Soon all of us will be packing up, moving out, and moving on. We will pack up our extra long twin bed sheets, our dorm room essentials, and say goodbye to our roommates. And for the first time ever, many of us will be living on our own for the first time ever. Think about it: we’ve lived with family until college where we had the luxury of dorm life or a whole slew of roommates to share our space wtih. But now we’re on our own. Many of you may cheer and jump at this notion. Others may weep.

I’m somewhere in between. I mean, I hated wearing shower shoes all the time, but I didn’t mind the coed bathroom (I see you, unnamed hottie sophomore year that “accidentally” let his towel drop a few times). I’m excited about leaving my 10X12 jail cell behind, but I’m apprehensive about going it alone in the real world. There are just pros and cons to both, and I can’t decide which I prefer. Read More »

Once upon a time in the magical world of high school, I had a boyfriend. And I cheated on him.

WAIT.
Before you start hating, give me a chance and hear me out. . . I know it was a sh*tty thing to do and I’m kind of a sh*tty person, but I can explain!

I had just turned eighteen, and was in the “I’m sooo over this” phase of my senior year in high school. Everything around me was boring: parents, school, my house, sometimes even my friends— even the prospect of prom season was boring me to tears. You’d think I would be excited for prom, since I had a boyfriend that I’d been with for about four months. But this boyfriend (we’ll call him Jay) wasn’t exactly the tastiest morsel in the bag of Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chips.

My parents hated Jay, of course, but since I was in that bored-and-rebellious phase, that fact only solidified my “love” for him. He was two years older than me and his days consisted of taking bong hits, watching TV, and playing guitar in his “metal band” (I know, wow.). We had an extremely close relationship and I considered him as much my friend as my boyfriend, but he slowly started to get increasingly possessive and verbally abusive. For instance, he yelled at me when I chose to spend my birthday evening with my friends instead of him, and then proceeded to ruin my night by calling me repeatedly for hours on end. Whenever I tried to end it, he wouldn’t let me. He even came to my high school one day to make sure I wasn’t talking to other guys behind his back. (Seriously, wow.) Our relationship became a prison that I just couldn’t break out of no matter how many times I tried. Read More »

Spring break is long gone. You’re back at your non-tropical, cold slash rainy campus, and all you can do is reminisce about all those tequila shots, bonfire parties, and, most of all, that boy you met.

Everyone knows about the infamous DFM. Dance Floor Makeout, for those of you living under a rock (or some of my nerdier Asian friends). Usually they don’t last past a couple of songs, and definitely not past twilight. During this time of lip-locking and hip-grinding, you can definitely get a sense of whether you’re compatible or not. Trust me, some DFMs are just …bad.

But then that one good one comes along and it makes everyone around you dancing seem like they’re in slow motion, a gray blur in the background. He’s tan and ripped and the hottest guy in the club, and you’ve got him in your arms. All you can think about is the way your body seems to connect perfectly, like a jigsaw puzzle with only two pieces that fit together as if by magic.

Even though the DJ stops spinning, you both don’t want the night to end so you walk to the beach, hand in hand. Not just palm in palm, but the kind of hand-holding where you touch finger to finger, and hold on tightly like you’re never going to let go. You sit in the sand and listen to the waves crashing onto the rocks. You talk about your family, your friends, your likes and dislikes. It’s like an audio edition of Sparknotes: Life. And it’s better than any book you’ve ever read. You find out you both are obsessed with Jay-Z’s Empire State of Mind, dislike chocolate, and have a dog back at home with the fam. And he only goes to school a few hours away. It’s just too perfect to end. Read More »

"WHY DID HE PUT A PERIOD AT THE END?!??!"

When our mothers were single ladies, courtship had a very different feel. If they met the man of their dreams, it meant they were chained to the house phone for the next week – waiting for Mr. Right to call. Today, cell phones have granted us the gift of mobility. While women may not be able to shake that desperate feeling, they can at least carry it with them to the mall or out with friends. The real benefit of cell phones, however, is text messaging.

In my experience, text messaging has been a blessing and a curse for relationships. Sure, you can edit and tweak everything you say before you say it. You can read messages and chose how and when to respond.  You can even save conversations to replay and re-analyze over and over again (a practice I am wayyyy to familiar with). On the down side, the informality of text messaging has blurred the “rules” of who makes the first move. Read More »

[It's pretty obvious that the average CollegeCandy reader has some very strong opinions. Opinions that she likes to share with everyone on the site. We love a strong woman (unless she happens to be charging at us with her fists raised), so we thought we'd give her a real forum to discuss her thoughts, feelings, and perspectives. Every Friday I'll be featuring a hot topic (like chivalry!) and leaving it up to you, the readers, to duke it out. So, read it and get your debate on in the comments section below!]

Sexting always seemed like a no brainer to me – don’t send naked pictures of yourself out into the world unless you want everybody to see them (see the smarts a college education buys!) – but it seems like the line has gotten blurrier and blurrier and now I’m not sure what to think.

Ok, let’s start with the obvious. We have all learned (from those drunken Facebook photos) that once something is out there, you can never really take it back, and sexting has the same issues. Even if it’s just words and not pics of your naughty bits, the last thing you want is for your BF’s pals to get hold of his phone and see (or god forbid, send) that stuff. Not to mention the whole, “what happens if you two break up and he’s still got all that stuff” issue. Read More »

As probably anyone will tell you, one of the biggest dangers to a relationship is infidelity (and maybe weekly Real Housewives marathons). We all know (or have dated) the total skeez-bag frat boy who only cared about scoring with chicks and the only person he was faithful to was the guy who sold him his Keystone Light. Obviously, that guy had red flags all over him, but what about the less obvious offenses?

I think one of the biggest problems in a relationship is that many people don’t really have the same idea of what constitutes “cheating.” So what the boy might see as just a harmless night out with his guys, the girl might freak out that her boyfriend would go to a strip club and look at another girl naked! Read More »

[It's pretty obvious that the average CollegeCandy reader has some very strong opinions. Opinions that she likes to share with everyone on the site. We love a strong woman (unless she happens to be charging at us with her fists raised), so we thought we'd give her a real forum to discuss her thoughts, feelings, and perspectives. Every Friday I'll be featuring a hot topic (like the sheer fashion trend!) and leaving it up to you, the readers, to duke it out. So, read it and get your debate on in the comments section below!]

Earlier this month, we were asking where chivalry had gone – and I’m down with that, I’d like to know where the little sucker slipped of to, too. But what I want to talk about now is, if chivalry is gone, do we really want it back? And should we expect it?

No matter how you slice it, chivalry always smacks of gender inequality. And yeah, it’s a lot harder to complain about inequality when you’re the one benefiting from it, but shouldn’t we still stand up against it? Are we hypocrites if we don’t? Add to that the fact that most of the little things we ascribe to the idea of chivalry (flowers, love tokens, professions of undying love) are all essentially just methods of winning over or even buying our affections. Isn’t that something that we in the post-feminist era should rebel against on principal?

We’ve fought for years to say that we’re just as good as men, that we shouldn’t be treated differently – and now, like it or not, this lack of chivalry is basically just guys treating us exactly like they treat each other. Hello, feminist victory here! Read More »

Things with the boy have been going pretty smoothly for the past few weeks! You guys finally made it through that awkward phase where you only texted each other when you were drunk, and now you’ve been meeting up for (sober!) study sessions during the week pretty regularly. Waking up to find him sleeping next to you in your bed is not an unusual sight anymore. Your friends have met him, you really like him you’re kind of infatuated with him, the birds are singing outside your window, all that good stuff.

But then one Saturday, you wake up next to him and for some reason feel… icky. And it’s not just because of his humid morning breath that’s blowing directly into your face. There’s this indescribably strong urge to just get him out of your room already so you can carry on with your day. It’s 11:30, your friends are probably all at brunch deciphering the sheer puzzle that was last night. You’re missing out, and you’re pissed off.

But why? A week ago you cuddled in bed with him until 3 in the afternoon and loved every millisecond of it. He has done absolutely nothing wrong, yet now you can’t explain why you suddenly shudder at just the thought of his stupid face.

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

Well, my friend, you’ve got The Disease. Read More »

It’s Thursday night, 8:00 PM. Most kids on my campus are pre-gaming in their rooms watching the new episode of The Office, but I am sitting half-comatose in a giant lecture hall, taking notes on Neo-freudians. It’s my own fault for picking such an unfortunately scheduled class, but I still silently curse my Ben Stein-clone of a professor as my phone vibrates for the tenth time since class started. Expecting another “where are u? we’re drinking at Kim’s apt, come!!” text, I glance down at my phone, instead seeing a blinking message: CANNOT RECEIVE MESSAGE. MEMORY FULL.

Frantically, I scroll through my texts, looking for one to delete. I keep scrolling… and scrolling… and then I’m at the end of the list, unable to delete even one. It’s weird, but there are just some texts I can’t bring myself to get rid of. And I know I’m not the only one. Read More »

I’m just going to be blunt here: why do we feel the need to pretend we don’t know what we want?

I’m serious. Whether we’re looking for friends with benefits or a one night stand or – worst of all – an actual relationship, we’re terrified to openly admit it. We don’t want to be viewed as clingy or slutty or any other label that will send the guy running for the hills.

Because that’s what it comes down to, isn’t it? The reason we’re so scared to say what we’re thinking? That once we do, once we admit what we’ve been praying they’ll pick up on telepathically, the guy in question is going to reject us so quickly we’ll practically see a blur as he leaves?

Not that we should want to be with a guy like that anyway. But the problem is we do want this guy – in some capacity – and we don’t want to know if the word “boyfriend” is repulsive to him. And society (and possibly some past experiences) has taught us that the words “relationship,” “boyfriend,” and “girlfriend” are instant boy repellent.

I’d been sort of seeing a friend of mine for about a month-and-a-half and before we left for winter break, I tried to be honest with him: I couldn’t deal with the crazy back-and-forth anymore, with him acting like we were in a relationship one day, then actively avoiding me the next. Or hugging and kissing me around strangers and my friends, but literally dropping my hand and stepping away when we saw one of his. I was so proud of myself for actually having the nerve to tell him all of this, and to go one step further and flat-out tell him that I wasn’t sure what he wanted, but I wanted a- Read More »