Here’s a lesson they probably won’t teach you in college: The Economics of Dating.

What’s the fundamental lesson they teach you in Econ? Why, supply and demand of course. More of a product, means less of a demand, while less of that exact same product causes people to want it like whoa. Now apply that to dating. It’s pure genius: limit your supply, and the guys will be sure to demand. These guys seem to think this is the perfect formula for them in achieving absolute success in the dating world. But hello, not to be obvious but I think Beyoncé said it best: Who runs the world? GIRLS!

So ladies, this is for you, your Intro to Supply & Demand.

Lesson 1: Sex

For the new guy in your life, here’s a way to keep things exciting. When it comes to sex, play hard to get (not too hard though. Guys like a chase, but they don’t want to feel like it’s never going to happen between the two of you.) When you finally do give up the goods, switch it up each time. Showers, couches, parks and movie theaters make for great spur-of-the-moment sex.  Each time you make him wait, he’ll come begging even harder. Remember, spontaneity is sexy!

For the longtime love: uh, if you suddenly begin to deny him the goods, he might suspect something’s wrong. Or worse, he might ditch you for that new spontaneous girl (see above).

Lesson 2: Availability

For the new guy in your life: Don’t make yourself too available. You’re a busy girl with a life of your own, now’s not the time to begin clearing your schedule for a guy you just met. You know how guys love leaving us girls waiting by the phone? It’s time for you to play that role. If you seem like your time is high in demand, he’ll be eager to get his share of your time.

For the longtime lover: You’ve been available enough to maintain this relationship for this long, don’t mess that up now by making yourself less available. Spending time together is key to maintaining a successful relationship, so keep it up.

Lesson 3: Social Life

For the new guy in your life: Here’s another “limit your supply and the guys will come demanding” guideline. You have your own friends and you have your own social life. The new guy needs to know that. Just like he’s not expecting you to tag along with him and his friends, you’re also anticipating that he’ll be understanding when you just want to have some girl time. When you do finally decide to hang around each other’s friends, it’ll be refreshing. And when you finally come back together after having been apart for some time, it’ll be all the more worthwhile.

For the longtime lover: Same rules apply. Bringing your signif other to hang out with your friends every now and again is totally fine, but you don’t want to end up being that girl that doesn’t get invited anywhere because your friends know your boyfriend will be attached at your hip.

Here’s a quick review:

You (minus) your supply (plus) some sex appeal = an increase in guy’s demand.

Easy huh? Limit your supply and the guy’s demand will increase. It’s almost like tricking him into thinking you’re some sort of hot commodity, LOL!

This is probably the simplest sort of economics, ever. I wish they would’ve taught us this back in…I don’t know, high school?

Got some college questions? Unsure of a decision? Worried about rooming blind this Fall? Just wanna chat it up with some really awesome chics? We’ve got the girls for you. Hit them up in the comments or shoot them an email with the subject “College Q&A”! They’ve got all the answers you need, no matter who you are.

Question:
Next month will be my second year at my new college. This past semester I didn’t do anything fun. I was miserable and studied the whole time. I came out with a 3.8 but no new friends. How can I balance schoolwork and get out and meet people at the same time?

GPA Girl:
Story of my life . . . haha, no, just kidding. Well, sort of. I also studied almost all the time, but so did my friends, so I think it evened out. You are perceptive to realize that you need to strike a balance between your social life and your academics, and it’s wonderful that you place both things as such high priorities right now. Friends and relationships from college are just as valuable (and often more valuable) than the grades you get there, so I wouldn’t want to see you miserable but acing every test for another semester. Have you considered signing up for some clubs, activities, or intramural teams? Busy Bee might have more to say about that. Don’t go overboard and start attending every single thing on campus, but going to events that feature your hobbies is a surefire way to meet new people who share the same interests. If you can manage to get on the e-mail lists for a bunch of different campus activities, you can pick and choose those that fit with your schedule and start meeting people that way. Also, it’s totally possible to meet new friends and study at the same time. Ask interesting people from your courses to form a study group, or ask your current friends to study with you on a standing weekly date and bring their friends along as well. Go out for dinner or coffee beforehand and chat with the new people who come along. Good luck! Read More »

Mmmm. Irish Coffee should fix this right up!

It’s no secret that much of the college social life revolves around drinking. We drink to celebrate, mourn, express loyalty to our football teams, to ease boredom, hell,  some people drink to make homework a little more interesting (no, no one else does that?).  Well, all that super fun drinking  sometimes results in not-so-fun consequences: mysterious bruises, ruined shoes, hours’ worth of un-tagging on Facebook, that dude lying next to you, and the raging, horrific hangover trying to escape your brain by splitting it open.

What’s a girl to do? Your mind jumps to Gatorade (don’t have any), Egg McMuffins (dammit, it’s past 10:30!) and water (your Brita pitcher is full of hunch punch) before remembering that bottle of Bloody Mary mix in the back of the fridge. Should you suck it up, stir in some vodka and take a hair of the dog that bit you?

Nope. Read More »

I don’t trust people who aren’t on Facebook.

It’s weird, I know, but FB is like peanut butter and jelly: you must be some sort of freak if you’ve never tried it. (OK, or you have some severe allergy, but that doesn’t fit with my analogy so let’s move on.) Facebook is at the epicenter of our generation’s world, so anyone who isn’t on there is weird, right? I mean, how do you live without Facebook?

How do you learn about people?
See pictures?
Know what’s going on in your friends’ lives?!
Update everyone on your own life without tons and tons of phone calls?

But maybe I’m not so weird for feeling this way. Matthew Myron, an author who recently studied online privacy, has gone as far as saying that not being on Facebook is social suicide. ”Many people feel they have to be a part of Facebook to socialize. Such sites are the modern equivalent of a mobile phone. They have grown into fashion accessories and they are a must-have for people who don’t want to be social outcasts.”

Myron speaks mostly in regards to status updates and wall posts, but his point is even truer than he knows. When people have parties, they invite guests via Facebook. When people have birthdays, we send them messages (and are notified!) via Facebook. When people have anything to say, we say it all on Facebook.

And when someone doesn’t have Facebook, we think they are freaks hiding something. Read More »

Now that I’m halfway done with my college career (a pretty cushy place to be, considering I have two more years before the real world), I anticipate all the bright eyed and bushy tailed freshmen about to invade the dorms and use fake-id’s at all my favorite bars. Putting myself in their shoes, I wish that someone had been there to give me advice for my college career (all I got was my Mom telling me not to hook up with any fraternity boys until Spring semester). So I dove in head first and learned a few lessons of my own.

I learned the value of my dry erase board to my social life, I learned that “attendance optional” classes are not always a good thing. I learned that I should always have an assortment of costumes readily available, and that sharing drinks with my friends meant sharing drinks with whoever they made out with (and whoever they made out with…) All of these were very important lessons, and I’d like to share some of the pearls of wisdom I gained my freshman year. Read More »

I have never thought of myself as a “sorority girl.” Like many people, when I thought of the term “sorority girl” I didn’t have a whole lot of positive connotations. I thought they were fake, perky, skanky, High School queen bees, who did a lot of partying and a lot of drugs.

Okay, so I guess I let Hollywood feed me that stereotype.

However, once I started freshman year I started meeting some great girls (who were none of those stereotypical adjectives) and who were also in sororities. The contrast baffled me, so I decided to investigate.

Sororities are pretty big on my campus and something like 35% of girls go Greek. That fact and all the nice girls I had met led me to sign myself up for the 2 week long process of rush. My floor friends all signed up too, but I was still pretty iffy about the idea. I told a few home friends and their reaction was…well less than enthusiastic. I got responses like; “Are you serious?” “Why would you do that to yourself?” and “You are not a sorority girl!” Even my mom, who went Greek in college, said that it might not be for me. These people were the people that knew me best, so I thought that they were probably right, and I prepared to pull my name off the list of about 700 girls. Read More »

Bored? Home on a Saturday night? Maybe watching the Olympics, maybe eating ice cream with a fork?

Not everyone can go out every weekend. Even CC knows that. If, like us, you’re around tonight, IM CollegeCandy27 from 9-10pm to shoot the sh*t, ask questions…commiserate on the lack of a social life…whatev.

Who doesn’t love a good train wreck like Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears? For us “ordinary folk” (those of us who wear Old Navy, drink PBR and dream of tetris being an Olympic sport) there’s nothing like a healthy dose of tabloid exploitation on those who live in (what at least appears to be) an alternate universe… where dogs wear juicy couture, cars come equipped with mini-bars, breasts double as flotation devices and pocket lint is laced with cocaine.

Is it true though? Or are the tabloids just running exaggerated fantasies to harpoon mass appeal? It’s hard to know because these grandiose lifestyles are perpetuated by the attention drawn to them (unless the celebrity is actually talented). Case in point — the Kardashian sex tape.

Bad publicity is good publicity, I suppose… especially for the venues that become associated with celebrity attendance (who doesn’t want to go to places where you might see a rockstar in a bar fight or catch Paris Hilton stripping down to… well… a slightly more naked version of her usual self?).

When talking about club publicity, nothing turns up the temp on a particular venue more than the drug habits of the celebrities. The scandalous behaviors of one Miss Britney Spears has made headlines for a variety of clubs in New York including an all time personal favorite, Marquee. Yes, she has been caught using drugs in the public bathrooms all around town and she’s not the only one. The question then becomes, of course, how many drugs are being done in these places? Certainly you run a high risk (pun intended) of being caught abusing drugs if you are a celebrity, but what about us ordinary folk? Are drugs swimming through the clubs as the tabloids would have us believe? Read More »

When I stepped onto my college campus fresh-off-the-boat (or FOB, as they call it) from some-obscure-country that I call home, I had no idea of the social niceties of dating in the states; my encounter with the opposite gender consisted of couple of weeks with a classmate in high school, who thought that drawstring shorts were most fashionable when paired with topsiders and gold jewelry.Needless to say, we broke up when I decided that the smell of his pineapple scented hair gel was overpowering the amorous odor of hamburgers and onion rings from burger king, which was our usual joint.

My freshman naivete wasn’t helped by the fact that I had that desperate urge to become the “IT” girl, something I had never been able to do in high school. I had lost 20 lbs. over the summer in anticipation that I would rise to a new social status at my east coast school, stocked my wardrobe with skin tight jeans and bling-encrusted baby Ts and headed to college.

So when I didn’t immediately become the most popular girl on campus, I was a little surprised. And taken aback. Moreover, my pre-college fantasies of hooking up with hot blonde-haired guys sporting surfer bodies wasn’t quite satisfied by the fact that NO ONE in the opposite gender seemed to want to talk to me. But I wasn’t giving up: I was willing to give it another shot two weeks later…and another one another two weeks later…but no action.

I then appealed to a friend who I shall call Courtney. Court listened to my problems, nodding along and making the occasional “uh-huh” as she listened to my ranting about guys not liking me and not being popular enough. At the end of my litany, she spoke a couple of words that seemed to make absolutely no sense at all.

“Honey…that’s because you’re Asian.” Read More »

Face it, there’s nothing worse than going out with a large group of girls. It’s social death — you inevitably get swallowed by or end up chained to your posse, most of whom probably look and dress similar to you. This summer, I suggest slimming down. Cut the fat and drop the entourage. They’re only stifling your potential.

I know it’s scary to tread social waters sans the company of twenty of your best best friends, but take a second to consider some people of the moment and their preferred going-out decorum. Lindsay: always with an entourage. Result? Rehab. Britney: entourage. Result: rehab. Paris: entourage. Result: jail. Read More »