He Needs to Date in College So He’s Not a Loser Later
Joe Webb aka Dr.Wizard
There’s this guy named Joe Webb. He’s a doctoral student at St. Louis University, and he writes a blog for college students that is awesome. In fact, I find much of his information useful and you know I’m waaaaaayyyyyy past that life phase. He is funny and irreverent, two things I hope I am sometimes, and he is refreshingly honest. Here’s what a column at STLtoday.com had to say about him:
“Webb, who teaches and studies at St. Louis University, has quickly gained a national following with his blog, www.dr-wizard.com. A couple of times a week, he posts meandering ruminations on life and pop culture that end with offbeat, humorous and no-nonsense lessons on how to survive and succeed in college. He’s a doctoral student in English as well as an instructor at SLU. So his counsel might be more described as that of an older brother who is also a professor. His age helps, too. He’s 28.”
You can read the whole article about him at STLtoday.com or Check out the full list of Dr. Wizard’s advice columns here.
Below are excerpts from the one I find most relevant to our purposes:
“It seems like every week, someone in the English department will post an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education on his or her office door lamenting the fact that “26% of college graduates can’t correctly make change” or “43% of American collegians can’t pick out China on a World Map.” Now, obviously, these are problems that need to be addressed – because, in my opinion, a third-grader who can’t do these things should be labeled “a little slow.” But, there’s another problem with our college graduates that I never see addressed in the Chronicle – and that is that 94% of America’s brightest young pupils (which, given the whole “change-counting” thing might be a bit of a generous label for “college graduates”) leave their alma mater with absolutely no idea how to date. And this is just a DISASTER.
…..the majority of you don’t date in college because it is just too damn easy to hook up with a girl for the night. If things go well during the initial encounter, you then simply continue to hook up with the same girl for a period of two weeks to six months, until you are either forced to acknowledge the arrangement as a “relationship,” or, because you find relationships scary, you are forced to begin hooking up with someone new. If you choose the latter, you will get high-fives from your other single buddies after explaining to them that “a player’s gotta play.” If you choose the former, you will then take the girl with whom you have entered “relationship”-status to a formal dance twice a year, and this experience will constitute your semi-annual date….
…after you graduate, you will never again be able to invite a girl who you haven’t even had coffee with to accompany you and one hundred of your fraternity brothers to Niagara Falls for a weekend of formal wear, Jello shots, Kanye West, and a night at the Radisson. It just doesn’t translate past the age of 24.
And so, this now leads me to a discussion of the two biggest reasons why you should learn to date in college:
The first – YOUR HEALTH. Hooking up leads to more sexual partners, less use of protection, and therefore greater risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases or producing a child. Let’s think about both of these options in terms of the mainstream media. You know how the people in the Valtrex commercials seem to be quite happy to have Herpes and act like it’s their privilege to take pills three times a day? They’re trained actors and actresses who don’t really have the disease. If they did, they’d look a lot less comfortable sitting on that park bench. And, as for the unexpected pregnancy issue, let’s consider the movie Knocked Up – just in terms of the random sexual encounter as a means of selecting the person whom you are going to raise a child with for the next 18 years. Guys, listen to me. That girl you sleep with after thirteen tequila shots doesn’t usually end up looking anything like Katherine Heigl – she probably looks more like Carrot Top. On the flip side – girls, the random guy you sleep with after eight apple-tinis usually does look a lot like Seth Rogen. This doesn’t happen if you go on dates first, then have sex.
The second – YOUR FUTURE GAME. In the United States, the average age at which males get married for the first time is 27.5; women get married around the age of 26. Do the math. This means that most of you will not be marrying one of the people you hooked up with in college. Throw in those average-lowering “courtship” specialists and the guys from your high school who went straight to Diesel-Mechanic School, and it’s a pretty safe bet that you’re going to have to navigate the grown-up mating world for at least half a dozen years. What you’ll quickly find is that the people who are still hooking up at bars on weekends are not the type of people who you want to be in a long-term relationship with. All of the sudden, you’re like Willie Mays Hayes in Major League 2: your college game was big enough to hit home runs in the University-world that is Life’s Spring Training, but once you enter the regular season, all you’ve got is the kind of warning-track power that leads to long, pathetic put-outs. The guys who can hit major-league home runs with doctors and lawyers and architects and graphic designers are the guys who’ve had substantial practice at asking girls out on dates, and who know how to operate in date-situations. So, start learning now. For the same amount of money that it costs to buy thirteen shots of tequila and eight apple-tinis, you can afford to meet a girl once for coffee, follow that first date up with Thai food and a movie, and still have enough money left over to send her flowers and a card the morning after you first make out – all without contracting one single case of the clap.”
To which I say: WORD. Your thoughts?
Related posts:
Do guys really send flowers and a card the morning after the first makeout? I should have started dating sooner! (Basically, except for the fact that I am female, this article is written for me!)
Gaaaaahhhhh, it's true. Here's my take on this dilemma about women wanting the bad boy – it's a comment I left on another blog (http://whoisjonray.com/2008/12/24/on-being-a-ni...
“Oh, this breaks my heart. As a blogger who talks to a whole lot of college girls, I can tell you that they want a nice boy. But….. he has to start out as an asshole. There, I've said it. Girls do want the bad boy. They want to conquer him, tame him, make him fall in everlasting love for the first time and then: turn into sweet boy. So it's not one or the other, it's a question of….personal development and growth. Or the appearance of such. Think about it. A one-two punch.”
Does that make sense? And let's have some input from the young women here – what do you have to say for yourselves?
hahaha i have a question for dr. wizard… what do you do with the girls, who when asked out on a date, look at you nicely and never talk to you again? lol i've said it before to my friends who are girls when they ask me “phil you always have a new girl, do you just hook-up or do you want something serious?”, I can only respond in my yrs of experience that, “if i asked oyu on a date, treated you well, communicated with you during the week, and acted like a gentleman, you wouldn't talk to me cause you'd think i was a punk”. none of those girls has disagreed with me yet.
I never got anything after the first makeout, except a request for another makeout! I think the moral of this story is date Dr. Wizard!
oh trust me i understand i am supposed to be “molded” into a nice boy. But, lol i was nice already. And i am still nice. you see i went to an all-boys boarding school (sidenote: for girls who hate asshole guys you and your fellow females create them), and i noticed i was gettin no play while the dudes who i heard dogging their girls out all week and sometimes to their faces were getting tail all the time. So when i got to college, i flipped the script and guess what happened? girls galore. now my issue is i'm a graduating senior about to leave college with a strong sense of HFS (hook-up fatigue syndrome) and when i get a girl who i honestly have feelings for i'm constantly battling to keep up my image of bad boy to not let her see my good boy….i know that sounds soooo retarded but i'm telling you with so many girls today that is the case. plus tbh i do like getting ass every once in awhile, and good boy phil doesn't cut it in that department, so bad boy phil is what usually has to be shown. but this boy just wants to be good lol if you know what i mean?
Phil, bad boy/good boy you sound like a total catch! (I have had one inquiry from a young woman who thinks you sound very, very cool, haha.) Girls are such idiots sometimes! There you are, sweet to the core, pretending to be a jerk to get some. Such a tragic waste. I do hear this tale A LOT from young guys, and I do know A LOT of really smart, attractive girls putting up with horrendous treatment from guys. Everyone is posturing, putting up with what-has-to-be so-so hookup sex, when they could be falling in love and having incredible relationship sex. When you do get a girl you like, try letting your guard down a little. Try introducing an emotional component. Because that's how women are made, that's what they want in the end.
One is Dr. Wizard single because if he is I think that is crazy. Secondly I think that Dr. Wizard pretty much sums it up. We do not date anymore and we do not know how to. Courting no longer exists. I'm shocked by the fact that so many of my friends are married or getting married. I don't know how they got into relationships in the first place. No one dates or knows how to anymore and it kind of sucks.
Haha, I am not sure of Dr. Wizard's relationship status, but I agree that he's hot! I wonder about the long-term impact of the lack of courting. People will marry without much dating practice or experience being in relationships – that can't be a good thing. Also, Megan, I hope your friends do not turn into smug marrieds a la Bridget Jones!
No they just get kind of boring. Then they have kids. Which is fun but makes me feel old like how the heck are they married with babies and I can't even find a decent guy to date for more then a month. I'm only 26 I have plenty of time but come on all these babies and weddings is not helping.
I was a bridesmaid 13 times when I was single – I felt just like Katherine Heigl in 27 Dresses. It really does get very, very old. And I'm sure you will get tired of being single Auntie Megan! You DO have plenty of time, though. You are just at the avg. age for marriage in the U.S. – sounds like a lot of your friends married early-ish. Sounds like you could use some new single friends….
not to answer your question but to provide a side note, i feel like as we become closer connected we become more lonely. I'm not sure how to explain it better than that but i feel it fits.
escardondito, this is intriguing. Please expand on this thought!
Yeah it just so happens that a bunch of my single friends all just meet people. I'm a little like wtf? I'm working on finding some more single friends or just waiting for the ones in couples to cycle back through to being single. A bunch hit the 3 month mark and from my NYC dating experience 3 months seems when people either commit to one another or break up.
Are you talking about when you get closer to a girl you are hooking up with you feel more alone? Maybe it is because you are hooking up too early. You say you want to be a nice guy (which is awesome) but at the same time you think you won't get any play if you are the nice guy. I think that the point Dr. Wizard is trying to make is that you have to date and get to know the person before you hook up with them. I know this may mean no sex for a while but maybe that is a good thing. If you take sex out of the equation for a month or two maybe you will be able to find something more meaningful. I'm not saying you can't do other stuff just try and keep it pg. This means that you will have more of an emotional connection with them before you hook up. If you hook up or hook up to soon and then get to know them you may realize that you are not as compatible as you thought and thus you feel more alone because you are in a relationship with someone you can't really connect with. That's just my two cents. It sounds like you are on the right track and I'm just there is a girl out there just waiting for you to come along.
Valtrex (valacyclovir) for Herpes Zoster: I was able to take Valtrex within 14 hours of the onset of the rash and I feel that it helped suppress what could have been a disaster. It has been three days on Valtrex and I am beginning to feel myself. The rash suppressed it's growth and is beginning the second and third cycle of healing.
So are they trying to earn a man's respect or something? How do you think that is going to play out when the only angle they're coming from is their looks because the respect is certainly lost. For instance I called a group of girls at a bar a bunch of trash bags to their faces and they all sat there with smiles on – one of them even still flirts with me WTF?
You have to be pretty special to come back from that corner. It's about ethics and women get what they ask for, a molded bastard that has set, when you mold it that shape you don't get to mould it again.
BTW I'm a nice guy too, I just know how it works and when you lose the respect for a girl because that's what she wants, it doesn't just come back like what your suggesting.
10pin, thanks for commenting! First, I agree that women are not going to be respected by men if they don't respect themselves. Any girl who flirts with you after you call her a trash bag is pathetic. And yeah, a nice guy probably doesn't stand a chance with her. But what do you do when you meet a girl you really like? Are you trapped into acting like a jerk?
No not trapped at all, because I'm not into girls that are like that. For something real I like abit more substance.
The old saying “easy come, easy go” rings true.
On related note I saw your first post about a strategy or something and I thought the proposition there was a good one. To me it seems that feminism has drifted from its founding values of equality and now the seemingly core feminist idea is that women are sexually free and should be as debaucherous as some men. This has fallen right into alot of men's laps …because it's more like women strive to be sexually free to debaucherous men. There are alot of things I could point my finger at why I think this has happened but I won't go into it.
We are totally on the same page.
“To me it seems that feminism has drifted from its founding values of equality and now the seemingly core feminist idea is that women are sexually free and should be as debaucherous as some men.”
This is soooo true, and literally keeps me awake at night. I think the time has come to write a post on that. Thanks, 10pin, very well put.
I've never dated a “bad boy” I have no desire to change people, help people maybe, but change?
I also really like dating, I adore when a guy comes up with something a bit out of the box to do – i guess it makes me feel like he's thinking about me. I never got into the hook up culture – sex has always meant a little more to me than that and its super important to me that a guy gets that about me. He doesn't have to agree, but he has to understand enough to not be pushy.
Deidre, you are far wiser than your years! It really isn't possible to change guys, imo. And why would you want a reformed asshole, when you could instead go for a genuinely good guy? But there is no question that girls are attracted to “bad boys,” and I can't believe it's because they want to be treated poorly. They want to be “the one” that can tame him and make him want to stop being a player. Wrt sex, I love it that you know who you are, and guys have to respect it. Any guy who likes you will stick around and wait till you are ready. Not a bad way of separating the good ones from the worthless ones.
“To me it seems that feminism has drifted from its founding values of equality and now the seemingly core feminist idea is that women are sexually free and should be as debaucherous as some men.”
Have you done a post on this? I would be interested in seeing one that delves much more into feminism instead of just looking at hooking up and how feminism has intersected to create the bad boy archetype. My mom was/is a feminist, served on the NOW board of directors or something back in the day. Well, needless to say I think feminism got it all wrong. With hooking up you and many others take an evolutionary model to relations between men and women, and its what ive observed in life too, that fits into female choice and male-male competition. I don't think feminism can be reconciled with evolutionary psych. They are pretty much mutually exclusive. Anyways, my whole life everyone has told me how to be “nice” according the the feminist/female definitions, esp with regards to treating girls and what ive observed is that women choose in the first five minutes whether they will hook up with a guy and the only thing that changes that is whether the guy next to him is more of a bad boy type, hence male-male competition. Idk, im all for equality of choice and more choices, but through the feminization of schools and female choice it seems men get screwed over alot, especially nice guys. I wonder how many of the “nice” guys are that way because of the feminization of schools. I mean, almost everything masculine that I ever did was torn down as inappropriate or bad behavior and alot of it im realizing isn't really all that bad but simply defined as more masculine. In other words bad doesn't always equal jerkish in many womens definitions. Ive also wondered how much it has to do with divorce and men not being around their daughters. But I never really put much stock into freudian theories of love. Idk, I think feminism is going to have alot to answer for one day, cause im only twenty six and I know way to many men who are dead today.
Hey, Bob, thanks for commenting! I've written about feminism in other posts, but only as it relates to sex. Most recently, I wrote “Why Do Feminists Find Abstinence Intolerable?” which is about the pressure women feel to have casual sex in order to live up to feminist standards of sexual emancipation. I really appreciate your honesty and your perspective.
I agree with you about the standards of behavior for boys in the schools. When my son was young (now 22), I saw boys disciplined for normal, impulsive boy behavior. I felt that the standards being applied were only appropriate for girls. When the boys didn't measure up, they got scolded. Michael Kimmel has written about the effect feminism has had on young men in his book Guyland, which came out last year. He feels that young men today are completely confused about how to behave as a direct result of the women's movement. I'm not sure feminism will have a lot to answer for – much of its legacy is very important for the daughter you may have one day. But there's no question that we'll be wrestling with its unintended consequences for generations to come.
Hey, Bob, thanks for commenting! I've written about feminism in other posts, but only as it relates to sex. Most recently, I wrote “Why Do Feminists Find Abstinence Intolerable?” which is about the pressure women feel to have casual sex in order to live up to feminist standards of sexual emancipation. I really appreciate your honesty and your perspective.
I agree with you about the standards of behavior for boys in the schools. When my son was young (now 22), I saw boys disciplined for normal, impulsive boy behavior. I felt that the standards being applied were only appropriate for girls. When the boys didn't measure up, they got scolded. Michael Kimmel has written about the effect feminism has had on young men in his book Guyland, which came out last year. He feels that young men today are completely confused about how to behave as a direct result of the women's movement. I'm not sure feminism will have a lot to answer for – much of its legacy is very important for the daughter you may have one day. But there's no question that we'll be wrestling with its unintended consequences for generations to come.