We all know that UChicago is notorious for being the place where fun goes to die – but does it also kill love? As Valentine’s Day approaches and love is in the air, I find that UChicago students are not very concerned with finding that special someone. Instead of buying flowers and making dinner reservations at a fancy restaurant, UChicago students are buying their 3rd coffee of the day and reserving reg rooms to study for midterms. Summer internship opportunities seem to have taken precedence over summer flings, candlelit dinners have been replaced by the fluorescents of a computer screen, and somehow, love poems are now assigned as homework for students to annotate. It’s crazy to think that one of the most notorious rom coms of all time, When Harry Met Sally, started right here on UChicago’s campus. Whoever wrote that movie was clearly not an alum, or else it would’ve ended with them both at successful investment banking jobs. Has the academic rigor finally killed any ambition for love at UChicago?
Not everyone here is in a committed relationship with their textbook, it seems. Datamatch, the college matching love service that many students participate in annually, gives some people hope to find love. Students fill out a quick survey answering some surface level questions and on Valentine’s Day students get their matches via email. Why ask someone out the old fashioned way when you can use statistics to find the perfect person for you? How romantic! I mean, could we make finding love any nerdier? Who wants to talk to someone they like in real life when you can plug numbers into a computer and hope that it spits out someone you’re attracted to. UChicago somehow found a way to make love computer generated.
This Valentine’s Day, I implore the students of UChicago to stop fantasizing about their networking events and start looking for love (not on a computer screen). Drop your psets and pick up a box of chocolates and a teddy bear. Do something scary, go out of your comfort zone, ask her out! Somehow the generations before us found love without calculations and algorithms, and I believe you can too. Let’s not let Harry and Sally’s legacy down this year!