Why college guys are totally hot

One night during my college days, I met this really great guy, Mike*. He was so sweet and cute and perfect, and we hit it off from the moment we met. There was a group of us hanging out that night, and I was on cloud 9. Until my sorority sister, Karen, pulled me aside to tell me hands-off, that she’d liked him for a long time and she was calling dibs.

So I backed off. Only to hear her laugh it off the next day and admit she was just being drunk and jealous, and she really could care less about Mike. I could have strangled her. But I didn’t – instead gave her a half-lecture about how uncool that was, and I moved on. Mike and I reconnected later that semester, and the spark was absolutely still there. We spent a romantic evening at a frat party (wait, am I remembering this right?), where we snuggled on his water bed and drifted off to sleep – no funny business, I know what you’re thinking! He did kiss me that night, and it looked to be the beginning of something really great.

I went home the next day and told my roommates all about it, and we discussed whether I should invite him to the sorority’s upcoming semi-formal. The consensus was of course I should. Except, sometime between the hours of waking up and deciding to invite him, another sorority sister, Amber, stepped in and invited him herself.

Wait – what just happened?

Maybe Amber didn’t know I liked him. Surely she didn’t know that he and I had just reconnected the night before. Maybe she just invited him as friends? I decided to be adult about it and talk to her, just to let her know I liked him and find out where she stood. So I approached her, and in the most mature way I knew how, I broached the subject.

“Well, you snooze you lose!” she replied. “You shoulda invited him first.”

Guh.

Mike did go with Amber to the semi-formal, and I never found out if they were just friends or not. He asked me to dance at the event, which I accepted, but she stared us down the entire time. I didn’t bother to pursue him after that.

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Of course, things weren’t always so high drama. There was one guy, Jim, who made out with my roommate once and he did such a good job that she told me I should give him a try. So I did – and his signature move – kissing while pushing a girl up against a wall – was pretty hot.

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Whether drama or fun, in college, the situations always seemed to be a similar cast of characters: one guy, and two or three or more women. And the weird thing was, looking back – these guys were pretty average Joes. It’s not like we were fighting over Brad Pitt or anything. So what was up with that?

Well, Winthrop used to be an all women’s teaching college, and although it had been coed for a few decades, there were definitely several women to every man on campus. So I always figured that the guys just lucked out in their choice of school – props to any guy that picked Winthrop.

Until, a few months ago I was talking to Chris and Jonathan and Lee, friends who live in Athens, Ga., and Jonathan and Lee told me that UGA is the same way. Really? We had a good laugh about how guys were either lucky or stupid, depending on how you want to look at it.

And then I saw this article in the New York Times. It’s not just Winthrop or UGA, but everywhere. The article not only explains why (guys going into the military, guys drop out at higher rates than girls, etc.), but also details the behavior that comes along with it. Girls putting up with cheating. Girls putting up with one-night flings and the guy doesn’t even have to text them the next day (we didn’t even have texting when I was in college. Or Facebook. Man, I feel old.) There were some questions raised in my circle of friends on Facebook about whether this article was legit. I can’t speak for that, but I can say that my college experience was absolutely what the article described.

The moral of this story is: If you’re a guy, go to college. Trust me.

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*Names have been changed.