Are you going to make a living for your future spouse and children based on a semester of “Philosophy I” or “Introduction to European History”?
Of course not, but in a number of professions it makes the difference between average and good or lousy vs successful. For example, I’m not all that optimistic about lawyers who didn’t do history and philosophy, translators/interpreters who didn’t do culture, anybody with anything like B.A./B.S. and above who didn’t do enough logic (most modern grads don’t even know how to think anyway).
Second, (and here’s where I get slammed as a male chauvinist) a lot of young women look to the man for leadership in a lot of ways. You don’t lord it over them, but if you are unostentatiously devout, they’ll try to tune in to you if they like you otherwise and will often follow a man’s lead. A lot of young women who are kind of wishy-washy about their faith in college can become the Ideal Catholic Wife and Mother if you give them a chance to develop their better selves. But the price of that is for you to become the Ideal Husband and Father.
How deep that will be is another matter, but yeah, that’s true. (Though it’s understandable that one may prefer a prospect who already is more serious about it.)
Being in graduate school is even better, particularly with women who are seniors. They’ll be more concerned about their future prospects than you will be. Grad school is even more “guy heaven” than being a senior. Trust me. Been there.
Been there too and didn’t notice any of that heaven you’re talking about.
Parties are fine, except that there’s the ever-present danger of being resented as a “bird dogger” by some guy if you pay too much attention to his date. (Do they still call it that?)
Dunno, I never pestered girls who already had someone (well, other than maybe a guy they’d gone out with one or twice, but nothing past that, I’d go for friendship instead and then maybe if at some point later neither of us had anyone, then it’d be free game if we actually were interested).
As a senior in college, even as a junior, I used to like doing “cold call” dating. If a girl is in the dormitory early on a Friday or Saturday evening, just wandering around, she doesn’t have a date. There will be some who don’t want to go out, but there are always some who do. I know this sounds like the world’s worst line, but I would pick what looked like a likely candidate and ask her if she is engaged or in love. If her answer was “no” to both, (usually she laughed at the question) I would then ask her out to something fairly simple that she didn’t feel like she had to kill herself getting ready for.
I asked them out without asking if they were free to go. If they had other commitments, they would either just say so or just go have a coffee or beer and mention the boyfriend was a keeper, then it’d be hanging out as friends, also cool stuff to do. A guy had to be friends with girls if only to know the difference and realize that not every bit of friendship warrants romantic commitment.
Interestingly enough, if the girl couldn’t go, she would go find a friend to do it almost without fail.
Didn’t work like that here. I mean, it was possible to ask friends to play matchmaker for you, but we were far less open about dating than most modern Americans seem to be. We called it invariably meeting or hanging out, and the only reason we ever used the word ‘date’ was to make it clear it wasn’t one or clarify intention (but that was rarely done). To define it as a romantic prospect, you had to work harder. Or just be a lucky airhead.
Met her at a Republican election night victory party.
Sounds like my type of venue.
I was a Democrat then myself, (no more)
I’d probably be learning Democrat if they didn’t have pro-choice and couple of other notions, as it’s not like I’m a big fan of trickle-down economics or anything of the sort, and I believe diehard capitalists to be delusional.
One last thing. Neither of us was, at the time, the very best Catholic. We weren’t indifferent, it was just that when you’re that age you don’t think all that much about it sometimes.
Yeah, I probably was worse. I didn’t fornicate, but I took more liberties than now (being a hypocrite while at it), and I suspect my doctrine wasn’t fully orthodox, either. I had some New Age influence, I guess, possibly from my reading and watching lists (Dune, Star Wars etc.). In short, I was a dolt. Part of the reason I didn’t go after ‘Church girls’ was that I knew they wouldn’t be as open to certain things as I then was, deluding myself that they weren’t sexual (thankfully, I didn’t get much opportunity anyway until I wisened up).
(Doesn’t mean I didn’t have an internal and external faith life and experience, though, or stand up for what I believed in, admit my beliefs in public etc.)
We grew into our Catholicism together, you might say, as we fell in love and began thinking about marriage and family and children. That’s a sobering reflection.
In turn, I got involved with a Protestant and then an agnostic, and I started studying canon law. That got me more interested in theology. Also had to read up and become more conscious of my beliefs in order to hold my own in those pro-life vs pro-choice debates and some more social justice issues.
