How to: Talk To Your College Crush

Last semester, there was a guy in one of my courses who sat at the other end of the room. I noticed him on the first day of class because he was easy on the eyes, dressed nice and for 1.5 seconds we made eye contact and blinked sweet nothings at each other.

Weeks passed as we sat on opposite sides of a classroom due to a seating chart the professor made according to where we sat the first day (a negative to college). There I was, permanently indebted to my desk by the door with no excuse to ever meander across the room and ask for a pencil – wink, wink – because there were 14 people closer to me than him.

There were no group projects, no breaks in between class – nothing. I couldn’t think of a single way to mingle with the dude I would make eye contact with, then look away, then look back, then look away, then…okay, you get the picture.

It was torture. The semester was nearing its end and I had made no progress – regardless of whether or not he was even right for me.

But then something happened one day: we were working on an in-class assignment using scanners and each student needed their own so we had to get them from the back of the room in our computer storage closet and before I had gotten up to get one, he was standing above me with one saying “this is for you.”

It may have well been roses. Come on people.

Okay, enough about me. College is great because you’re surrounded with people your age all day for four years (unless you were on my super awesome I-don’t-know-what-I-want-to-be-when-I-grow-up, six year plan). But even though you may have five classes or so a semester, with 20 or more students in each of them (equaling one-four hotties at least), it’s not as easy as it seems to just hit on everything with a pulse.

There are obstacles like seating charts and long lectures and If you sit around thinking up a way to make conversation, the semester will be over and you’ll never see that person again unless you get lucky and they end up in another one of your classes, but don’t count on that chance. These college crushes aren’t like Cher, they don’t keep coming back.

Here’s how to be more than classmates with your college crush:

1. It’s college, not a convent, so unless your professor makes a seating chart where boys and girls are separated, sit where you WANT to sit. You don’t owe anything to that desk you chose on day one. Sit next to the person you want to be “lab” partners with and you’re guaranteed some sort of interaction.

2. Strike up conversation about anything (class, homework, your school, the weather, etc.), it doesn’t matter what you say, well, just don’t confess some weird fetish, as long as you’re making progress. And if you don’t get lucky enough to sit near them, talk to them during a break, before or after class, on the stairs, in the hall, in an elevator, at the vending machine, during a final – wherever – time is precious!

3. Get a phone number, email or Facebook contact so that way in case you miss class, you have a totally reasonable excuse to contact him or her, and graduate that conversation into their hobbies and favorite bands. What? It’s not like you weren’t getting at that anyway?

4. Pretend like you don’t understand something. Play the “Whoa is me, I don’t know what a protractor is” card.

5. If all else fails, be ballsy like scanner boy. Your kind gesture will be greatly appreciated and never forgotten. And by never, I mean never.

I often felt like college was a little bit like high school, aka, round two of not knowing how to approach someone or whether or not you even should. But damn it, you’re young and your biggest regret will be never knowing if something could have happened with that person you thought was the cats meow.

-Jessica

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