Although I look back on my 4 years at Dartmouth as some of the best years of my life (it has already been decided that my children and 9-year-old brother will be attending), I often regret that my time there coincided with the onset of my dating life. Let me explain.
Dartmouth was considered a very "wired" school back in 1998. This may still be the case. Just to illustrate this point, the abundance of public computers on campus was deemed the culprit of the pink-eye epidemic of 2000, prompting the distribution of thousands of bottles of hand sanitizer in student mailboxes. It was a futile attempt at controlling the virus, which school officials might have known had they realized the extent of our dependence on blitzmail, Dartmouth's email program with comparable speed to instant message. You must remember we lived in the mountains, cell phones were not commonplace as yet, and many of us having spent our high school years opting to study instead of socialize, were, simply put, awkward and inexperienced. Why talk to someone in person when you could email them? It's an excellent question (if you were born after 1975, give or take a couple years). And only 7 years and several relationships later, do I really know the answer. And let me tell you, this knowledge has not come easily.
My first foray into the world of cyberspace occurred during my freshman year of college. Equipped with my first AIM screenname, I decided it was the appropriate time to flirt with my high school crush. He liked me (so I heard), I liked him, and we were now separated by hundreds of miles with the occasional visit home to look forward to. It was a pretty "safe" situation, all things considered. We flirted, made plans to hang out, flaked on each other, and ultimately "broke up" within a couple of months of chatting. I use quotations because we never actually saw each other, let alone dated, throughout this "relationship." I use quotations again because...well, you get the idea.
Before I had my first, real, live boyfriend, I saw the demise of two potential crushes. Over blitzmail. The first was a kid from my English class. He was an artsy guy, an actor. We never really spoke in class. After one of his performances, I plucked up my courage and asked him for coffee....over email. I never heard back from him until about 3 months later. He told me didn't check his email and had let it just "pile up." Hmm. Did I believe him? My ego said, "of course he's telling the truth," whereas my practical expensive brain knew better. Needless to say, we never met for coffee and our remaining interactions were weird. The next guy had a somewhat opposite problem. He got a little bit too excited over email, saying things he didn't dare in person. It was a bit creepier than I could handle. End of crush number two.
So what does any of this mean? Although I won't really go into much detail about the rest of my relationships, I will say that there was many a time when I believed email was a better mode of confrontation than speaking one-on-one. BAD IDEA. It took me a while to understand why although the explanation is easy and quite obvious. Communication is two-way and unpredictable. It changes course because one person doesn't have all the answers. Without someone interrupting the communication dangerously resembles a soapbox. And nobody likes a preacher.
So the moral of the story is that Dartmouth screws you up. I'm still in therapy and I don't see myself resolving these issues anytime soon.
P.S. Texting is no better than email (This is a more recent revelation).
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