Things men looovvee about women

Remember this star??

Guess love has changed a lot

Most regrettable tattoo ever

5 ways to survive horror movies and high school

One of these Elle covers is not like the other

But bad relationships exist, and bad mistakes abound.

I think the worst element of a bad relationship can come from the man or woman doing something atrocious for their significant other.  Now, this goes beyond making a scrapbook of the future babies you’re going to have, sending him a love furn, or naming his pee-pee Princess Sophia.  Those are ridonkulous, sure, but there are some things that can’t be tossed out when the relationship inevitably fails. The real offenders – the majorest of major mistakes – will stick around for the long haul to haunt you in the later life. You want to date smart? Avoid these three massive mistakes.

1. Get His Name Tattooed On Your Body
I’ve seen this happen numerous times before and I want to sincerely know what that crazy bitch was thinking as a sharp needle embroidered her boyfriend’s name into her precious skin.  Maybe I’m just jealous  (I just don’t understand how truly in love I have to be to want my boyf’s name in a heart on my chest), but seeing my ex boyfriend’s name spelled backwards in the mirror every morning? Horrific.  Get a tattoo of your favorite food on your ass cheeks. Now that is worth the ink.

2. Sacrifice Your Future for Him
This one saddens me the most, because it seems like a perfectly innocent move, until you realize you’ve taken a crap job or put down a deposit on a crap school to be near your significant other. Even worse when your friends and family are miles and miles away.  It seems like such an adventurous and romantic thing to do! You and your boyfriend on your own in the real world; every day is like your honeymoon!

No. Stop writing out your own Nicholas Sparks novel and do what you want to do. No one is worth sacrificing your own personal success. And who knows? If you follow your head instead of your heart, you may even end up as next season’s Bachelorette.

3. Make a Sex Tape

Unless you’re Kimmy Kardashian, a tape with you rolling around in bed naked is not going to get you posted all over the pages of US Weekly and a reality show with your sisters in Miami any time soon end well. Especially now that we know how guys feel when they’re scorned, bitter and broken hearted. In the real world where we all aren’t BFFs with Ryan Seacrest, that intimate moment caught on tape is much more likely to end up in the hands of the wrong people….and lots of them.

Follow my lead and just do not do these things.  Do you really want to end up  jobless, with an ugly tat and a sex tape floating around?

Let’s face it: we all make stupid decisions. Like choosing a fifth over a review session, or bringing that guy home…who stole our iPod in the morning. That’s part of college life… and a big part of what makes it so memorable. But there are some choices that have longer lasting repercussions; things we do now that will haunt us later.

So here are the 11 things from your 20’s you will most definitely regret when you’re 40.

11. Risque Internet Photos: What’s the point of having technology if you can’t use it to send a naughty pre-shower photo to your BF? Nothing will turn him on quite like a naked photo popping up in his inbox while he’s brushing up on his Stats knowledge. You trust him, so what’s the worst that could happen? How about a break up? Or the “forward” button? No matter what you think, those photos are going to come back and bite you in the (naked-with-a-spot-of-cellulite) ass. Just show him the real thing and let him turn to his imagination (or internet porn) for a mid-class pick me up.

10. Trendy Tats: You totally love butterflies/stars/unicorns now, but I can bet money that you won’t want them plastered on the top of your foot or your lower back forever. No one wants to see a mom with a rose tattoo on her left shoulder, so think before you ink.

9. Choosing guys over your girls: You get caught up in your relationship sometimes and blow off the girls. Fine, we get it. But when sometimes turns into “What the hell ever happened to Mary?” there is a problem. Especially when Mr. Douche Bag finally breaks up with you and you come crawling back to the girls with a tub of Edy’s and a box of tissues and they aren’t there to wipe the snot from your cheek. Do you really want to spend the rest of your days holed up in a dirty apartment watching your man play Rock Band and chug Natty Light? Learn the balance, honey.

8. Getting married too young: I’ve seen it too many times – people graduate, freak out and hold onto whatever they can of their youth. And they get married.  And become super lame married people. It may be pure bliss now (and lots and lots of kitchen-ware), but just think about all the awesome stuff you will miss by being tied down in your twenties, all that freedom: to travel when you want, to take a job wherever you want, to sleep with whomever you want, to party as late as you want, to discover yourself, to sleep with whomever you want…. Plus, do you really want pictures of your friends doing keg stands in your wedding album? I thought not.

7. Smoking: Mmmm tobacco. It feels so good when it hits (and consequently blackens) your lungs. Especially after you’ve had a few Rum and Diets. And you look so cool doing it. But you know what doesn’t feel good? Chemo. And you know what doesn’t look cool? Your wrinkley face or your kids stealing the pack from your tobacco stained purse and trying it for the first time. When they are 6. This sh*t will kill you, so stop it. Right now! Seriously, put down that Marlboro Light, sister.

6. Not traveling enough: Trust me on this one – you will never have the time, money or freedom to travel like you do now.  Pretty soon you’ll be working late nights and counting down the minutes until the that will be chock full of grocery runs and Bed, Bath and Beyond trips. Try finding time in that busy schedule to jet-set to Europe and “find yourself.” Pack your bags and see the world now, before you’re too old to experiment with drugs in Amsterdam and enjoy a ping pong show in Bangkok.  Pick up a travel book and start planning!

5. Bad Credit: You can’t live without that Coach bag right now. You just have to have that DVF dress for the date party. Everyone else has an iPhone and you want one too. You’ll just charge it and worry about it later, right? Wrong, bitches. Ruining your credit now on stupid stuff (yes, I am telling you that bag is a stupid investment) will totally eff things up for you in the future. Things like getting a house, a car, a boyfriend (bad credit is a total turn-off) and sometimes even a job. Spend wisely, ladies. That bag is going to be out of style in .25 seconds anyway.

4. Not finishing school: Do we really even need to mention this one? Could you think of anything you’d regret more when you are 40 and working the checkout lane at your neighborhood Wal-mart? That is, assuming, you can even get that job in this economy.

3. Pre-vacation tanning: You tell yourself that you just want to get a base tan before Spring Break in Cabo. Sure, you will look fiiiine in that white shift dress for the 6 days after you return, but that wrinkley, skin cancer-ed mess is not going to look so hot when you’re 40 and you look like a Sharpei.

2. Stilettos: Part of becoming a woman is rockin’ the hottest pair of the highest heels. They make your legs look sick (that’s a good thing), make the men beg, and your jeans are too long to wear with anything lower. Why wouldn’t you wear them? I’ve got one hyphenated word for you: hammer-toes. You want to spend the later part of your life looking at that in a sandal?  Make your Feet Happy with these ultra comfy and cute socks..

(Editor’s note: I was going to put a picture of a gross foot here, but you Google “gross feet in sandals” and tell me how it makes you feel.)

1. “It feels better without condoms” sex: You’ll probably regret this one right off the bat as you spend your senior year chasing a kid around the dorms, but you’ll seriously regret it later when you look back at your life and realize how much you missed out on because you were busy changing diapers and bouncing a kid on your knee. Oh, and no one likes a woman with a bumpy vagina. I’m just sayin’; those genital warts will never go away.

There are actually only 7 types of college hook ups.

And it doesn’t matter where you go to school or who you fraternize with, every girl on every campus will at one point (or many points, you saucy minx!) find herself in bed with one of theses:

1. The Bro:
This fellow is all brawn and no brains and secretly has watched more episodes of ‘The Hills’ than you have.  Not that I’m going to say that this is a problem, but the things he whispers in your ear the whole night make you wonder how many times he has Googled the transcripts from all of the porn movies he owns.  He gives you an awkward-fest drive home in his Tahoe while he listens to Trick Daddy and checks out his reflection in the rear view mirror to make sure his collar is still perfectly popped. You wonder where he keeps his lacrosse stick, because you want to hit yourself upside the head with it.

2. The Friend:
He is your buddy, the one you can be a pile of crap around and he will still love you. The decision to get nakey seems like a good idea when you’re hanging out between the hours of 2 and 5 A.M.  He just look so cute after all of those Jager bombs, he really does care about you, and where did those biceps come from??  Come 8 am, when you’re staring at the ceiling in a long awkward silence, you learn quickly that things don’t turn out like they did in ‘When Harry Met Sally.’ Oh Hollywood.

3. The Stalker:
This gentleman wants immediate contact with your fine ass post hook-up. First, he pokes you on Facebook.  Then he uses up 1400 of your 1500 monthly texts with late night “whatcha up to”s. Wherever you go, he manages to show up: in the library, the cafeteria, the quad, the local bars. You may have thought this would be a one-night party (or worse, a sloppy sesh you’d rather forget), but this one is in it for the long haul, regardless of your feelings otherwise.

4. The One Without Facebook:
What is he hiding?!

5. The Classmate:
He is relatively cute, especially when he tries to chat you up in Espanol and fumbles over his verbs. Awww. Come Thursday evening, he’s hitting on you in Spanglish at the bar and you’re convinced he’s the hottest Spanish speaking stud muffin you’ve encountered since Mario Lopez. But that all fades away as soon as the tequila wears off and you’re staring at his back every Tues/Thursday for the next 10 weeks trying to focus on conjugation and not what he looks like under those jeans.

6. The Regret:
He pushes you off the bed mid-sleep, he calls you by the wrong name, he has the dankest breath known to man-kind, he tinkles the bed. And in some cases, he is cheating. You wish you could black it out and wouldn’t even tell your roommates about him had they not been waiting for you in the living room when you stumbled home in the morning.

7. The One That Inpires You to Write a Haiku:
The Sunday morning jaunt we love to call “the walk of shame” morphs into  “the walk of victory” after a night with this love boat. He makes you stare blissfully at the blowing vegetation next to your dorm and wonder how life possibly went on without him, to read poetry and Google ‘love quotes.’ The entirety of Sunday is dedicated to a movie reel in your head of the sweet things he said to you about your almond shaped eyes, the way he played with your hair, how cute he looked when was sleeping in the morning.  He’s reaffirmed your faith in men and inspired you to buy a one-way ticket to Relationship-ville.

[Note: #7s are more rare than an English speaking Physics prof, but they do exist.]

[Got a Dude itch you just can’t scratch? Sick of getting the pity-eyes as you sift through the Self-Help section at your campus bookstore? Over wondering what those boys are thinking?  We got your back, girlfriend. Send your question over to askthedude@collegecandy.com. The Dude won’t sugarcoat it, beat around the bush, or any other weird cliche that means lie to you. Like a nice, juicy hot dog, he’ll be 100% real beef, 100% of the time.  So bring it on, ladies.]

Hey there,

So. First semester last year this kid and I were kind of “what are you doing tonight” kind of friends, but I always got the feeling that he liked me. Second semester last year, I had drunken sex with him, which I felt bad about, because I had liked him and I felt like I ruined my chances. We continued hooking up that semester. At the end of the year he told me he liked me, but I didn’t take it seriously because he was drunk.

Last semester we were both abroad and didn’t talk. This semester he texted me for a few weeks trying to hang out, but I assumed that he just wanted to hook up. Then we ended up hanging out the other weekend- the first night we just talked for hours catching up and made out, he slept in my room and kissed me before he left the next morning. The next night we hung out too, and I told him I didn’t want to have sex, but otherwise it would have gone there. He told me he liked me again, but I didn’t really take it too seriously this time either because it could have been a “try to change her mind” kind of move. I awkwardly responded I liked him last year, and that I guess I still like him this year. I also told him that I don’t want to do the random hookup thing anymore.

The following week he texted me on Tuesday asking me to hang out for Thursday, which I said yes to. On Thursday, he asked me what I was doing, and told me that he was going to a party at someone’s apartment with friends. That’s it. Saturday night he told me to come pregame with him and his friends, but I had plans. He called me late that night and I didn’t answer.

I have no idea. I like him, but to my knowledge he has not seriously dated anyone in his college career. Also, the two times we’ve hung out recently have been late at night on weekends, which was totally my fault – he texts me earlier in the night when I am generally busy. He is acting differently from last year when we were hooking up by asking me to hang out more and not late at night, to do things with his friends, etc. Basically, I want to date, not hook up. I don’t want to have sex with someone I am not dating, which complicates things because I’ve already had sex with him. Is it possible to start again, and how do I communicate what I want?

Thanks so much,
No Idea

Dear No Idea,

I’m a firm believer that there is no greater invention than: The Time Machine. What better way to apply the knowledge we’ve learned from our mistakes than traveling back and preventing them from ever being made? Life’s so much easier, right? Remember how Hermione saved Sirius Black’s life using the Time-Turner? Marty McFly improved his parents’ marriage (as well as financial situation) and caused Doctor Emmett Brown to avoid his own assassination thirty years later. Whether it’s a remote, a car, a phone booth (the “most excellent” phone booth ever), or the great DeLorean, all you need for your situation, No Idea, is to hop in your most convenient time machine and…oh wait…well, I guess we’ll have to deal with reality.

There’s no reset button in life. Everything that you’ve done has an affect on what you’ll do. In your case, you had drunken sex with a guy you like. This has affected your ability to trust his intentions for, if my calculations are correct, over a year. Not an unfair reaction but be careful you’re not letting your mistrust become unjustified.

You want to date. You’re afraid he wants an FWB. You’re scared to get hurt. You’re worried you’ve ruined any chance at a relationship because you’ve already been hooking up without any strings attached. Well, don’t worry. There’re always strings attached. Sometimes the strings are to not be allowed to ask for more. This comes down to a central question: can you give him a chance? Right now you’re afraid. You’re afraid of getting hurt. You’re worried about his inexperience with relationships. You don’t know if you’ve got more to offer him than sex. Fear clouds facts.

You’ve had an on and off thing going for over a year. You do spend time together doing things other than each other. He’s been expanding the parameters of the relationship you’ve already established by trying to include you with his friends and going out in daylight. These are positive signs.

You know the biggest obstacle to your happiness? You.  Don’t worry, this is the case for the general population of planet Earth. Nothing stands in the way like fear. Fear of change. Fear of pain. Fear of having something to lose. We let fears like these breed caution and create a form of self-protection that serves us up to a point. Then we pass that point, letting these fears alienate us from taking or creating opportunities to grow. If you feel like this guy’s not worth the honesty, then either keep up the status quo until you get bored or he wants to change the rules and then move on. If, however, you’re afraid that you aren’t worth it, then take the plunge. Tell him how you feel and what you want. In five years would you rather be wondering what would have happened? In five years you won’t have a time machine to help you make this decision again. Unless you invent a time machine. Which would be awesome. You should totally invent a time machine.

Gunning it to 88mph,
The Dude

When evaluating the main driving forces of our decisions, the power of guilt seems to be a leader in the race. On a day-to-day basis, we are forced to do things out of guilt.  If our actions could hurt someone else, we opt out of doing things we may personally want just to avoid the guilt.  And of course, we are often left to feel guilty for an infinite amount of time over our regrettable actions.

In this theory, however, it is hard to determine if this “we” means “we as people” or “we as women.”  A recent study by psychological researchers in Spain indicates that women in fact, do feel more guilt than men.  Beyond the conclusion that men are from Mars and that women are from Venus, the study has proven that we are actually genetically different when it comes to this emotion.  Neuroscientist Simon Baron-Cohen writes: “The female brain is predominately hard-wired for empathy. The male brain is predominately hard-wired for understanding and building systems.”  (And yes, before you go Googling, he is related to Borat, they are cousins.  So much for credibility…)

A report of the study by MSNBC describes how this proof can be used to support claims that “men should be more like women.”  When it comes to love, life, emotion, and now guilt, it is easy to blame men for all of the downfalls.  Perhaps, convincing ourselves that men are emotionless is the only tactic that lets us keep our sanity.  If only they were in touch with their feelings, if only we could “fix” them, if only.  Then all of our problems would be solved.

Finally: science to validate our coffee talk.

As rewarding as it may be, I have to stop and wonder, doesn’t the study prove the exact opposite? If men do feel less guilt than women, instead of “fixing” them, shouldn’t we be more like them? Wouldn’t we all be happier if guilt wasn’t the flavor of the infamous chip on our shoulder?

Undoubtedly, there are times when we should feel guilt.  If you sleep with your sister’s boyfriend, yes, you should feel guilty.  When mistakes are made, it is such guilt that prevents us from making them again.  The MSNBC article proposes that if men were to feel more guilt, there would be fewer instances of “Tiger Woods” and “John Edwards” situations.  I would have to disagree because of the simple fact that this study, along with any human behavior study, is a generalization.  There will always be exceptions.  Women as a whole succumb to guilt, yes, but there are many women whose sinful actions reflect no guilt.  There are still sociopathic women who feel no remorse for murder, to note an extreme example.  Even if we were able to “fix” men so that they generally felt as much guilt as women, the Tigers of the world would still exist.

On a completely separate tangent, if men were to reflect, analyze, and regret their actions to the extent that we do, could you imagine how much more coffee talk we’d all have to take part in??

So before you bask in the glory that someone has proven that we need to “fix” men, pour another cup, consider how much happier you’d be if you were to take on the carefree lifestyle of your male counterpart, and sip on that ladies.

(P.S. if the caffeine overdose causes you to spill on the couch…try not to feel too guilty.  Unless it is your Jewish mother’s couch, you stand no chance.)

[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 socks with sandals!) 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!]

In case you’ve been living in a hole for the past week (or, you know, busy paying attention to important world events), Heidi Montag got plastic surgery… like seriously! While we and pretty much everyone else has been clear on what we think about her new “look,” it got me thinking. One of the big things people have pointed out about Heidi’s work (aside from the sheer number of surgeries) is her age – specifically that she seems incredibly young to be having work done.

Now we’re not talking about medically necessary surgeries or reconstruction here, I’m talking the pure “make me pretty because I want it” type of thing, and I admit, I can see the appeal. While I have always been a proponent of the “love yourself the way you are” mentality, there are definitely days where I have wished I could wake up with a smaller nose or bigger boobs or a magically flat tummy – and I know I’m not alone. I was always taught that self-esteem is important, and most of us wouldn’t think twice about, say, coloring our hair or getting a gym membership to boost our self-image.

Isn’t plastic surgery just an (admittedly extreme) extension of that? 

And the truth is procedures like these cost a pretty penny so if you’re going to invest in them, why not do it early and get you’re money’s worth? Should you have to wait years and years to do something you know you want just because you seem too young for it? If you have the will and the means, is it fair for other people to tell you that you shouldn’t do something that will make you happier?

The flip side, of course, is that the risk of buyer’s remorse goes up the younger you are. I mean, I know a lot of people who got tattoos just a few years ago and already regret it, so dropping that kind of cash on something you may want to get reversed down the road isn’t a real appealing thought. Also, we women have spent a long time just trying to be accepted for the bodies we have, so going the other way to make yourself seem more “perfect” seems counterintuitive to that idea. (Especially when Heidi goes on TV and says her message is that “beauty comes from within.”)After all, (as my mother loves to tell me) it’s the little flaws that make us the most beautiful – where would Lauren Hutton have been without that gap in her teeth or Beyonce without her bootyliciousness (I can’t believe I just put those two in the same sentence). It might take a long time to finally make peace with the way you look, but wouldn’t it be better to be special than generic?

OK, now you tell me – what do you think about getting some work done? Would you do it if you could? Would you hold it against someone if she did? And should age be a factor in the way we look at it?

Duke it out, ladies!

"WHY DIDN'T I SAVE THAT?!"

Did you know that college was all about academics?

Yeah, we didn’t get that memo either. We spent more time researching easy professors, building a schedule that didn’t require waking up before noon/at all on Fridays, and playing Kings, than actually studying. And now that we’re out of school and forced to use what we “learned” in college to survive, we’re kinda regretting opting for that easy American Culture class over a much more useful economics section.

Other big regrets: getting drunk before a giant presentation on St. Patrick’s Day, skipping discussion sections to snuggle with the BF, and taking that 1-credit “blow off” that actually had two 10-page papers and a final exam. Who knew one stupid credit could wreak such havoc on your GPA?

It’s obvious that most of us have made some poor decisions in college (and I’m not talking about the time I double fisted a fifth of Captain’s and a 2-liter of Diet Coke); it’s hard to think of academics, learning and our futures when there are football games to attend and beds to sleep in. This week I asked the CollegeCandy writers to share their biggest academic regrets. Maybe you can learn from them. Maybe you can relate to them. And I know you definitely have some of your own to share.

Kari – Florida State: I regret not going to attendance-mandatory classes. For some reason I never believe that my teachers will take off those “half letter grades per absence”…and it sucks to watch an A go to a C because I hit the snooze button a few too many times.

Elizabeth – UC Berkeley: Deciding to take my TREES class for a letter grade instead of P/NP because I thought it would be an easy A.  Def ruined my GPA that semester…

Caitlin – University of Alabama: Slacking off in my last few weeks of my math class and getting an 89.4. They didn’t round up.

Charlsie – Hollins University: I wish I stuck with French and studied abroad in Paris my junior year, instead of abandoning foreign language completely.

Lauren – University of Michigan: Not majoring in History. I hated every single English class I took.

Ricki – University of Michigan: Drinking too much at my date’s semi formal and fainting in the middle of my Econ 101 presentation the next morning.

Thu – USC: I discovered online TV shows. Game over for my GPA.

Nina – Michigan State University: Going out the night before my final last year. It was absolute hell sitting through it… even though I did ace it.

Brithny – Duke: During freshman year, I had no idea how many famous researchers and nationally recognized professors there were here! Definitely signing up for those classes this time around.

Noa – CU Boulder: Sleeping with my T.A. And then ending things with him while I was still in the class. Awkward city.

Kelly – Simmons College: My biggest academic regret is that I put everything off until the last minute and then have to bed my boyfriend for Adderall to get it done.

Brittany – University of Richmond: Turning in my Calculus final exam completely blank. Apparently, professors aren’t above failing students and consequently booting them out of the Business School.

Elizabeth-University of Missouri: Going out the night before a huge Anthropology test. A pseudo frat house is not the environment most conducive to studying.

Sarabeth – University of Texas: My biggest regret is saying no to a Blink 182 (favorite band EVER) ticket last week because I had a paper due…and  then the paper got moved.

Zahra – Northwestern University:  I regret not taking a 9 am class this quarter. I’ve done it before and it makes me so much more productive than when I know I can sleep in until noon.

[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, 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 healthcare reform!) 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!]

There’s all kinds of advice out there about your freshman year, but more than what classes to take or how I should bring my own Solo cup to parties, the the biggest piece of advice I heard back then was “don’t get a boyfriend right away, play the field.” Of course, being the serial monogamist that I am, I didn’t listen. And got a boyf faster than most students unpacked their boxes. But now I have to wonder if I would have been better off if I had listened to those wise sages. There’s a definite up and down side to the first semester boyfriend, and I think we owe it to all the ladies getting ready to start freshman year to talk it out.

The temptation of the first semester boyfriend is almost insurmountable. You’re in a new place, surrounded by new people - new, attractive people – who don’t know about that time in high school when you slipped in chocolate pudding and had to walk around all day with a brown stain on your butt. All of a sudden you get to pick the kinds of classes you take, the activities you get involved in, the events you go to - which means your chances of meeting someone who’s really compatible with you is way higher than when you were just meeting guys who lived in the same school district as you.

And freshman year is a time when everyone’s coming out of their shell, meaning you could end up meeting a great guy who’s just not the type you’d have ever dated before. Having someone to go out with could encourage you to go places and do things you might not do on your own; and let’s not ignore the fact that freshman year can be a little scary – having someone to share that with (whether he’s a freshman too, or is just remembering it) could be a real comfort.

Maybe the biggest problem of all with avoiding a BF when you start school is that it seems so arbitrary. College is supposed to be a time when you can let loose and do what you want to do instead of what you’re “supposed” to do, so why shouldn’t you date whoever you want to whenever you want to?

The downside, of course, is what getting a boyfriend at the start of college keeps you from doing. By being tied down to one person early on, you could be held back from doing things because your significant other doesn’t want to do them. We’ve all encountered the problems of balancing friends with a BF, but at the beginning of college, when you don’t have many friends to start with, it’s easy to spend all of your time with the guy, keeping you from getting close with others.  And while not all of them are fun, those learning experiences that you’re “supposed” to have starting out (like which guys at the party to avoid after you’ve done tequila shots) can be important, and you will miss some if you’re playing the couple.

Finally, (though some do make it) most people who start dating in freshman year end up breaking up down the line,which could mean that you’ll have wasted a lot of time and opportunities – trust us, you don’t want to have regrets. People evolve, particularly in college, so the person you start dating as a freshman, may not be the same guy when you graduate.

Well girls, what do you think? Is it worth the risks to get a first semester BF? Should you swear off serious dating at the start of college? What did you do your freshman year? Or what will you be doing when it starts? Sound off in the comments!

When I was still in school (ugh, I get depressed just thinking about the glory days), my dad would always tell people that no one was having more fun than me. I loved the football Saturdays, the sorority date parties, the movie nights with my friends and even the late night study sessions in the library.

I had the best four years of my life on that lovely campus, but there are a few things I’d change if I had the chance. Like growing out my bangs a whole lot sooner or steering clear of those belly shirts I wore to frat parties freshman year (it was a lethal combo, let me tell you).

No matter how much we all love college, I know that everyone has that one thing they’d like to do-over. Being that we’re all heading back to campus in a few weeks (Oh wait, not me. Sigh.), I asked the CollegeCandy writers to share their do-over wish lists so no one else has to make the same mistakes we did. Because college will be the best four years of your life and you don’t want to look back with any regret.

Mechelle – Florida State: I wouldn’t have had that boyfriend freshman year. Seriously, how many times in your life are you surrounded by gorgeous boys your age?

Melissa – GW: I would go back and relive Welcome Week of freshman year.

Kim – Stanford: If I could do one thing thing over from college it would be that guy in my english class. Yes, I would do him over, and over again.

Alex – Lakehead University: I honestly don’t think that I would change one thing! I’m pretty satisfied!

Thu – USC: Apply to study abroad this upcoming semester instead of waiting until spring… And of course, go out even more than I did.

Leah – Ryerson University: I would have taken a gap year to travel instead of going into a program that wasn’t right for me.

Kayla- California State University, Sacramento: I wish I would have discovered the concept of early morning classes. Commuting through mid-morning traffic for two hours a day wore down my soul.

Desiree – Columbia University: I would’ve scraped together the money to get a fake I.D. It broke my heart to tell the hot 28 year old I was crushing on I had to skip his birthday party because I was still 20.

Lauren – University of Michigan: I would have gone abroad; I’ll never have the opportunity to do something like that again. Oh, and I definitely wouldn’t chug straight from a bottle of Captain’s. Bad. Idea.

Carly – Grinnell: I would NOT have gotten so attached to my first college boyfriend. Mistake! I should have been out making more friends instead.

Katie – Michigan State University: I wouldn’t have skipped as many classes.  I mean, I had some amazing naps, but I probably should have been in class instead.

Elizabeth, University of Missouri: I’d probably reconsider taking any class that involved me waking up before 10 AM.

Sarabeth – University of Texas, Austin:  I would’ve changed majors a LOT sooner. I hated when people in my classes thought I was a freshman.

Maddie – Tufts: My 19th birthday, which ended with my cellphone in the toilet and a laundry list of additionally embarrassing choices/mistakes.

Charlsie – Hollins University: The people I became friends with turned out to not be the people I thought they were, so I would like to have a do-over of making friends and branching out more.

Lauren H – The New School: I spent so much of my college career worried about what someone else would think that I didn’t go anywhere or do anything for three years. I wish I could undo that.

Ashley – Marietta College: Not given my virginity to an a**hole… or dated an a**hole for that matter. Argh.

Cristina – Michigan State: I’d definitely not go home as much in the beginning and try to meet as many people as I could instead of living in my safety bubble of a life until last minute.

Sara C – Fordham: I would take more dance classes. No, really. I’ve taken two already and it helped me focus and improve my discipline. Not to mention, no homework, great workout, terrific stress relief, and hot guys (yes, some were straight)!

Liza – University of Minnesota: Transfer sooner! Just sayin’. Minnesota is amazing.

What would you want to do all over again?