Once upon a time, I downloaded a dating app and engaged in reckless swiping practices. This in itself is nothing unusual. After all, Tinder is as much a staple on your average college campus as Xanax, and I am just as unjustifiably snarky as I was when, as a toddler, I ingested paint out of pure spite for my older brother (I turned out perfectly fine, so it’s okay).
What I could not have foreseen, however, and what no one tells you, is that dire consequences result when you quit something like Tinder cold-turkey – dire consequences not unlike those that follow a stressful week of exams. Fortunately, because I deleted my Tinder account right before I took my midterms, it’s exceedingly easy for me to compare the consequences of each in my mind.
For instance, there’s the whole residual anxiety thing. Sometimes, you just can’t let go. No matter how hard you study or how well you think you did, there will always be that iota of uncertainty in the back of your mind. No matter how good of an idea I think deleting Tinder might have been, I’ll always wonder how many mozzarella sticks and meetings with badass grandparents I’ll be missing out on.
The flipside of this is that sometimes, they can’t let go. Some teachers, bless their hearts, don’t know when to quit. They’ll stand over you as you cower in the corner and remind you sternly that “it’s only going to get harder from here.” Some boys, bless their hearts, don’t know when to quit and are also not equipped to know much else. Bless their hearts.
Despite this, I find that I’m receiving significantly less attention all-around. One great thing about midterms is that if you take good notes, everyone in the class suddenly and inexplicably becomes your best friend. That girl who stumbles in fifteen minutes late to every class and never makes eye contact. That guy who’s snoring before the PowerPoint even fills the screen. The kid who can’t blink because he drank 15 energy drinks in the past 15 minutes, and now, he’s hearing colors. They will all befriend you. They will shower you with praise. They will leave you before you have the time to dry off. I mean, I’m assuming.
In the same vein, I’m no longer being constantly bombarded with Instagram notifications and questions about the Dalai Lama, so I guess that’s nice, but I do miss having the opportunity to troll people. Little known fact: Hilarity and sarcasm are immensely stress relieving. If I can’t do it on Tinder, I’ve learned that I start doing it in real life. This is not good for me, nor for the greater campus community. In the same vein, now that the majority of my exams have ended, and I can’t go back, I find myself yelling random facts from past study sessions to a wall at three in the morning. College is fun.
