On Having a Campus Crush

When you have a crush on a small college campus, you develop a kink—in your neck. Your head swivels left and right, up and down (depending on the height of your crush). Eventually your body adapts and allows your head to rotate 360 degrees.

This happens, of course, because an ugly part of you insists on knowing that person’s geographical coordinates every time you leave your bedroom. I have ten minutes to get to class, which leaves me enough time to cut through the student center to grab a coffee, even though I have no money left on my card, because maybe he’s working at the cafe—or is that only on Wednesday morning? Gosh, if only it weren’t creepy to write down the time and location every time I encounter him so I can better predict where I can casually bump into him.

Each time I would catch feelings for a Skidmore boy, I’d evolve into a superhero, and my power was the ability to trick myself into thinking anybody I saw on campus could be my crush. During my freshman year, when I was consistently spending the night with the stocky Italian boy from my dorm, every dark-haired, less than five-foot-seven guy morphed into my dark-haired, less than five-foot-seven guy. I would walk with determination down the main walkway, and, one-hundred feet in my peripheral, I would catch sight of one of these imposters headed my direction, so naturally I would flip my hair, shift back my shoulders, and suffer.

The lookalike would approach me. Look at your phone until the last possible second, then hit him with a nonchalant head-nod, I would recite to myself. My whole morning has led up to this moment; this is what will convince him that we should be exclusive sleeping partners.

Five out of one-hundred times it wouldn’t be him. Of course it was so rarely him; I hardly ever saw him in daylight, as he was either a vampire or a Type-A Player. Yet I would make the same mistake over and over, denying the fact that, though my school’s population is puny, the chances of a random person on the sidewalk being him were still 1 in 2,300.

Crush recognition takes time to master. I never mastered it; I got a boyfriend instead. But I am thoroughly confident that, now that I am single again, the kink in my neck will return any minute now. In fact, my neck has been feeling a little sore.

When you have a crush on a small college campus, if you are lucky enough to see them during the day (and I will continue to use gender-neutral pronouns, because 90% of all students have caught feelings for a campus cutie), that interaction can determine your anxiety levels from that precious moment to the next one. If the interaction goes well (say they compliment your scrunchie and touch your arm), then you might still suffer from the post–flirtation fidgets: did I momentarily black out and tell them I have prematurely engraved our initials in a birch tree? But, as long as you have a juicy recap for your friends, you deserve to do a happy dance in your room while listening to 2008 Taylor Swift.

What if you see each other frequently, at work or in class? There are rules for this; How I Met Your Mother’s wisecracking womanizer Barney Stinson coined the “Platinum Rule”. Using examples from his and his friend’s past, he intricately argues that one should “never love thy neighbor” and should refrain from “pooping where you eat.” Still, the protagonist, Ted Mosby, eagerly goes on a movie date with his dermatologist, Stella Zinman.

When you have a crush on a small college campus, you will break the Platinum Rule. If you’re wondering how it worked out with Ted and Stella, I will say: they hit it off and were together for several months, during which Stella pretended to like Star Wars for Ted, introduced him to her daughter, and welcomed him into her home, and left him at the altar.

Of course, despite the danger of awkward tension as a result of a failed fling with a classmate or coworker, you are in college. You might still wear Invisalign or use Proactiv. You are young, and this is the time to go after the wrong people. Besides, the chances you get left at the altar in your college days are slim.

Nonetheless, if things don’t work out with that kid from your biology lab, you will both dread class and long for it.

Even though they may not be into you that way, you can’t help but think something—maybe a new hairstyle or plastic choker—could change their mind.

It becomes a reason to wash your face, wax your chin, watch makeup tutorials on YouTube. You go to the gym, eat more kale, speed-walk all over campus hoping to “accidentally” bump into your almost lover. Yet at night, after a day of fruitless effort, you watch The Bachelor, spill tears into your bowl of ice cream, vent to your roommate until the sun comes up. All the while, though you occasionally enter a dark place where self-confidence is nowhere to be found, you don’t realize that your love-obsession has distracted you from your chronic existential dread, your academic-induced panic, and your eternal bitterness toward your father.