Sophia Zhao

It’s a Saturday night. The pounding bass and flashing lights from the Bulldog Bash on Old Campus have turned your brain to mush. You’re a first year who is straining to hear your friends amidst the carefully-crafted Yale-sponsored chaos, and that’s when you see him: the guy from the laundry room. 

One bag of popcorn later, you’ve worked up the courage to talk to him. Two bags of popcorn later, you’re heading back to his suite and texting your roommate not to worry if you don’t come home that night. The next morning you trek across Old Campus back to your dorm, praying that it’s early enough for no one to be outside and perceive your first walk-of-shame. For the next 24 hours, you wait for him to text you and ask to hang out, or even grab a meal because after last night, he is undoubtedly in love with you. You wait to hear something — anything — but you don’t. And you’re crushed. 

This happens several more times over your first semester. You swear you’re not a hookup person, but you’ve never made out with the same person twice. But that’s not on you, that’s on them. They’re the ones missing out. You’d be an incredible significant other.

By second semester, you’ve realized that no first year is actually looking for anything serious, which is fine. You’re secretly in love with one of your best friends anyway, so you engage in the occasional dance floor makeout to distract yourself. Your delusion reaches its peak just as you’re about to leave for the summer — how convenient! Out of sight means out of mind, so you’ll have the next three months to get over him in peace.

But distance makes the heart grow fonder, and by the time you’re moving in for sophomore year, you’re actively looking forward to seeing him again. You grab lunch together and after the initial butterflies have worn off, you suddenly realize that he’s … different. Or maybe he’s not; maybe you just spent your entire summer romanticizing the idea of him so much that the real him will forever be pale in comparison. Either way, your delusion has shattered and it’s back to the drawing board. How will you find love at Yale?

Now, you’re a sophomore, so surely people are looking to settle down, you think. And they are: left and right people are coupling up, soft-launching and hard-launching on Instagram until you can’t tell what’s platonic and what’s not. And you don’t really care, because to you, it’s all just annoying. Where is your relationship? Where are they hiding? 

Your friends convince you to download Tinder and Hinge, which is fun for approximately two days. Then you watch “La La Land” with your best friend (your other best friend, who you’re not in love with), and you promptly delete both apps because they will never help you find what Seb and Mia had. 

Then you get busy. You forget about love.

And that’s when it hits you. The guy from the buttery who always gives you extra mac-n-cheese bites asks if you want to grab coffee, so you do, and it’s great. It’s more than great, actually; he’s kind and he’s funny, and you have great banter (you’re a sucker for banter). A few dates later, you make it official: you’re in a relationship. 

You spend your second semester of sophomore year bouncing back and forth between his dorm and yours. Study session in his, wine night in yours, reverse next week. You get to know his suitemates, and he gets to know yours. While snow falls outside the gothic windows in your common room, you take turns sipping from a mug of Keurig-made hot chocolate. When spring comes, you flock to Cross Campus with the rest of the student body and lay in the sun, talking about what you’re going to do over the summer.

And then summer comes, and you realize just how difficult long distance is. You talk less and fight more than you used to. You promise yourselves that when you get back to campus in the fall, things will be better. And for a little while, they are.

But junior year is hard. You’re both incredibly ambitious, taking six-and-a-half credits to try and finish the requirements for your major, all while serving on the boards of several clubs. You don’t get to see each other often, but when you do, you try to make the most of it.

It’s not enough. Right before Thanksgiving, everything falls apart. Suddenly, you’re canceling your flight to Michigan and calling your mom to tell her yes, actually, you will be home for the entirety of November break, despite what you told her three weeks ago. No, you don’t want to talk about it. Yes, you’ll be okay until then. She gives you an extra slice of pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving, and your friends from home help remind you that this isn’t the end of the world.

You throw yourself into your work for the rest of junior year, which isn’t hard. And you only hook up with your ex twice, which rounds down to zero, so you’re really quite proud of the self restraint you’ve been showing. Other than that, you swear off dating. You don’t have time for it: a conveniently true excuse. 

By the time senior year starts, you’ve got one foot out the door. It’s not worth it to start anything new, you think, because you’re about to be gone anyway. You spend your last few months on campus doing all of the things you never got to do, and making as many memories as you can. Love isn’t romantic anymore — it’s platonic, and it’s intoxicating. You will never again live so close to so many of your friends. You spend every waking moment with them, clinging to college life as it slips through your fingers.

One night, you get a little drunk and tell your best friend — yes, that best friend — that you used to be in love with them. They confess that they used to be in love with you, too. You sit in silence for a few moments, wondering what might have been, before laughing it off. You don’t tell them that a tiny part of you will always be in love with them, even if the rest of you has repeatedly denied it.

Then you graduate, single. You go off into the world, single. You watch your underclassmen friends go through the same romantic cycle that you did, and you realize that all along, the only person you ever needed was yourself.

Because let’s be honest: you will not find the love of your life at Yale University.