Friday, July 30, 2004

Thoughts About Being Married While in College

I've been so busy with other things and writing about other things, I completely forgot about the wedding that Kristin and I went to two weekends ago. This was a wedding for one of her college friends, so there was a bunch of SJU and CSB people there, which was nice because weddings where you don't know anyone tend to suck. What I find most interesting about the couple getting married is that the bride will only be a junior in college. Can you imagine going through your last two years of college being married? I sure can't.

Being married will mean you have to miss out on a lot of things. Now I'm not talking about getting drunk and making out with the freshmeat... err, freshmen, but lots of other little details. You wouldn't be living on campus, which would be a big thing for me. The bride, Vanessa, will be living with her new husband in a town about 15 minutes from college. I couldn't imagine going to college and being outside of the atmosphere that comes with it. Hell, I miss the college atmosphere like you wouldn't believe right now and I'm not even in college. I think part of that may come from Rochester being a very boring town, but I digress.

I had so many interesting nights where, if I wasn't living on campus, they wouldn't have happened. I'd be sitting in my room playing video games or doing homework and someone from the apartment down the hall would come over and just hang out or convince you to go do something stupid. Or I might have been reading and someone would call wanting to order Gary's Pizza and watch a movie across campus. Or I'd be walking to Sexton, SJU's quasi-student commons, only to meet some people walking home and we'd decide to go play some DDR for a while. These things that happen by chance wouldn't happen if I were living way off campus. Sure, people could still call me to go do things, but it would have to be scheduled because I would then have to drive into campus from where I was living to do anything. I'm sure after a little bit of time, my friends would probably just give up. The college atmosphere is about spontaneity, not planning (that's what this supposed real world I'm in is supposed to be for).

The other thing that I wouldn't enjoy was not having something to look forward to after you finished college. Of course, you could say that having a kid or buying a house or doing a multitude of other things could be looked forward to, but my mind doesn't really operate that way. I've always had this notion that the event that comes after college is marriage. Don't ask me why I feel this way, but without that to look forward to, my outlook on post-college life would have been much more bleak.

I can also imagine that people would, ever so slightly, treat you a little bit differently. There would be a stigma attached to you if you were married and in college (and the average college age). People would think you rushed in, you didn't think it through, you were too impulsive, or that it wouldn't work out. I wouldn't want to have those things thought about me.

Marriage, to me is always something that just happens after college. Yes, I know that I'm done with college. I'll get around to it eventually. Just give me some time :-)

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