lvii

“I'm feeling like a star, you can't stop my shine/I'm loving cloud nine, my head's in the sky/I'm solo, I'm ridin’ solo/I'm ridin’ solo, I'm ridin’ solo/Sooloooo.”

-Jason Derulo, property of Beluga Heights

            Everyone around me is pairing off rather quickly, as if there is an imminent, apocalyptic flood that I have not been informed of, a flood of Noah’s Ark proportions. Everyone around me, bearing proudly the same “Class of 2014” maroon shirts as me, has seemed to have gotten a “significant other” within the last three weeks, either picking up a girl here in BIGCOLLEGETOWN (without custom business cards, somehow) or by dragging a high school relationship out to the University, clinging onto the familiar that I have ohsocasually dropped out of my life.

            Not that there is anything wrong with it all, of course. I am not here to argue about people’s life choices, however flawed or immature I think them to be. But there is something to be said for being single, at least at this point in our collective collegiate careers, for being free to meet new people and to explore every inch of opportunity, without being shackled to another person that you loooove.

            There are some people that I know that obviously really like each other, that are very compatible with one another, peanut butter to the other’s jelly, ice cream to the other’s pickle, that have committed to sticking through to the bitter end, through the smooth and the crunchy. But then there are the others (you know who you are) who have latched together out of insecurity, out of fear of the eighty-thousand people tromping through campus. And that is not admirable or necessary.

            But me? I’ll just continue to judge them as I wait for the right one to come along and, until then, jam to “Ridin’ Solo” in front of my bathroom mirror when nobody’s looking.