The Tartan

Editorials featured in the Forum section are solely the opinions of their individual authors.

One of the lesser-known degree pathways offered through Carnegie Mellon is the MRS degree. It is not uncommon for people to meet their spouse at college. Of course, not everyone marries their college sweetheart, but enough people do to make me very aware of the fact that there is a strong possibility that I will meet my husband (at least my first) at Carnegie Mellon. I think it would be very kitschy and quaint to marry one of my fellow Tartan commoners. Pittsburgh is a city that makes me feel so domestic. I love seeing engagement photoshoots in front of the College of Fine Arts and Hammerschlag Hall. Marrying an alum would provide an amazing excuse to get married at Phipps Botanical Garden. Pittsburgh is already a city that offers so much — why not explore and consider the connections that Carnegie Mellon can make? 

You know who met at college? My parents. You know how they met? I don’t know for sure — I would hope that you wouldn’t know either — but they (allegedly) worked together at SUNY Plattsburgh’s college newspaper. My mom was an editorial page editor and my father wrote editorials. 

Personal anecdote aside, we see so many people getting married to their college partners, but it can often feel difficult to see Carnegie Mellon as an environment where students feel the love. Perhaps this is due to the fact that our hearts are in the work. Not in the mood for love. 

Students at Carnegie Mellon are a calculating sort of people. This can pave the way for poorly motivated attempts at facilitating romantic relationships. Think of it this way: You are a student at Carnegie Mellon. You have a horribly intense workload. (Hard to imagine, right?) You finish your weekly lab and turn it in just to be greeted with the lab for next week waiting to be completed. It’s a never-ending cycle. It can be hard for you to have friends outside of class or study groups because there is not enough time to hang out with friends outside of an academic context. Your GPA can’t afford it. 

Despite your heart being in the work, you are still a human being who desperately craves connection and companionship. Sure, you might not have time to hang out with a bunch of friends between your workload, but you can manage to fit one special person into your desolate social calendar. Ideally, someone you wouldn’t mind hooking up with. 

You end up meeting someone, and because of your heavy workload, you end up unfairly making your needs their responsibility. Eventually, this becomes overwhelming for your special person, they set boundaries, decide to leave, and you are back where you started — in a committed relationship to the academic grind-set, with a one-way-train-ticket back to Loserville.  

Let’s be honest with ourselves, being single isn’t the worst thing in the world, but you know what is? A relationship that facilitates unhealthy dynamics and attitudes that attempt to dilute the value of love and companionship. 

All of this isn’t to say that ECE majors are incapable of love, but rather, that the academic rigor of being a student at Carnegie Mellon makes this a difficult time for all students to approach romantic relationships with a healthy mindset. (I am not one of these students, I am a School of Drama student with a famously open calendar and no homework or academic commitments ever. I am single, ready to mingle, and I write for The Tartan — what more could you want from a girl? Email me at cvanauke@andrew.cmu.edu with serious inquiries only, I read The New Yorker, have a Criterion Channel subscription, and zero emotional baggage. Let’s get married!)

It is important for us to recognize what it is we get out of romantic relationships in order to figure out why we place such importance on the idea of falling in love. It’s not always a relationship that we are necessarily seeking out, but rather the comfort of spending time with the people. 

Perhaps the draw of an exclusive relationship is the idea that you will ideally promise each other your companionship and attention; that you will make time for each other, despite all the chaos at school. It’s a pretty sweet deal. It’s a mutual agreement of prioritized companionship, with the opportunity to fool around (always at your roommate’s inconvenience). Relationships are a guaranteed source of company.

One thing that students don’t have is time to worry about whether or not their friends actually like them, or rather, whether or not their friends like them to the same extent that they like them. Students can’t let these social anxieties encroach upon the little free time they have for themselves. 

When two people agree to date each other this solves the uncertainty that students might bring with them to their friendships. If someone doesn’t want to date you, you break up. If someone doesn’t want to hang out with you but is unsure how to go about phasing out the friendship, things are strange and the friendship is ultimately sent to a limbo of noncommunication. 

There are plenty of people who have been able to find love at Carnegie Mellon, and good for them. But for all of the normal people out there, the odds are stacked against you on this god-forsaken campus. Control what you can, focus on what you have, and prioritize the already present relationships in your life rather than chasing the idea of what you think will make everything better. 

If you choose to chase love (or the idea of being loved by another person), I totally get that. In the meantime, if any of you are attractive Tepper, Dietrich, or CFA students looking for a date to Carnival, send me a message. Let’s get married!