May 9, 2024 | OPINION | By Grace Gassel
A statistic I have heard multiple times circulating around campus is that one-third of Colorado College alumni get married to a fellow CC alumnus. I have found no evidence of this supposed study, but it haunts me.
Several of my friends’ parents met in college, subsequently starting a life together and eventually producing my beloved friends. The time to meet your potential partners of lifelong love and relationships is now, I guess! You may notice a hint of existential dread in my tone — crushing on the Block Plan is a struggle.
The nature of the Block Plan encourages the extreme. It is all-consuming for three-and-a-half weeks at a time. The small size of our student body makes an already challenging environment even harder to pursue a crush. On the Block Plan, the first day of each new class is a rush. Could there be a special someone? Who will be your next potential crush to boost your academic motivation and will to live for the next three-and-a-half weeks?
If I don’t have a Block crush, I am disappointed. If I do develop one, it is overwhelming. I will pine to no end. Delusional is a fitting word. Once a crush is developed, it is exciting and wonderful. You see them daily in class. Feelings grow by proximity. It can become a mini obsession. At a certain point, one is forced to consider whether the crush is worth real pursuit.
There is a limited window to make a move before the class is over and you never see them again. Making a move is a high-risk game, but there is a thrill in this risk. Failure means seeing them every day you have left in class and experiencing the daily discomfort of rejection. Then somehow, even after class ends, you run into them everywhere around campus, despite never having met them before class began. And to top it all off, the entirety of the interconnected student body will eventually find out.
Success also means seeing them in every day that’s left of class and maybe even pursuing the relationship past the end of the Block. The intensity of attraction could be reciprocated in a wonderful way due to the unique circumstances the Block Plan provides. However, the crush and relationship might also only be contained in the timeline of the Block: a fling.
The Block Plan is in part to blame for the rampant hookup culture on campus. The risks of pursuing a Block crush prevent real relationships. Because it is so challenging to pursue and maintain a mutual and successful romantic relationship on campus, people more deeply engage in short-term hookups that attempt to satisfy a collective, overwhelming desire for deep, long-term connection. Maybe crushing and making a move on the Block Plan is for the brave.
To all those who have the courage to do something about your crush, I applaud you. I am not such a person. I will pine, stay silent and fearfully avoid the risk. I instead engage in a practice my friends and I have coined, “The Long Game.”
“The Long Game” is exactly what it sounds like. It is not for the faint of heart. It begins with a Block crush and continues even after class ends. The most important rules to follow include yearning from afar, social media stalking and keeping tabs on their romantic status. Then, one day, long into the future, you can step in when the time is right and fall hopelessly in love with each other.
I have no solution to the extreme romantic behavior the Block Plan facilitates. For now, we must take the risk more often (speaking to myself here).