Northwestern University is to speed dating as a high-security all-male prison is to Walt Disney's "Mousercise" (a brilliant take on the 1980s' cardio phenomenon, Jazzercise – complete with giant head costumes of Mickey and friends). Yes, that's right folks, it doesn't get any more awkward than that.Oh wait, actually it does. Throw in the fact NU's speed dating took place in the Dittmar Art Gallery in Norris, the dating equivalent of a medieval dungeon torture chamber; required a registration questionnaire that took over an hour to fill out; and actually involved NU students, who are too embarrassed to say the word "vagina" in a gender studies class, and I think we'd have Scott Peterson in a "Mousercise" leotard quicker than you could name the last person you slept with at NU (and by sleep with I mean had sex with...not passed out next to, face down on a fraternity's couch).
So, as you can tell, I embarked on this mission of undercover reporting with extremely high hopes and a fresh dose of optimism (or was that Percocet?). Determined to observe and try to comprehend the awkward mating habits of the NU student, I put myself out there, met new people, laughed for about an hour, cried for ten minutes, laughed again, took two shots and recorded the following:
The Online Questionnaire
I filled this out about a week prior to the speed dating event I attended Tuesdsay, May 3. It took me over an hour to do, and each time I placed a comma in a number entry (for example, I wrote $4,000 instead of $4000) all of my responses were immediately erased when I submitted that page of the questionnaire. I guess psychology professors don't believe in being grammatically correct.
Another thing became clear to me as I filled out the online questionnaire (and refilled it out, and refilled it out, finally realizing I'm answering the same questions over and over again because I put a damn comma in my future spouse's expected salary): It's obvious Professor Finkle, who ran the speed dating research project and assumably made up these questions, has no idea what the average NU student is like. For example, one of the questions asked you to rate how strongly you agreed or disagreed with this statement: "The best kind of love grows out of a long friendship." Doesn't he know that's what I tell every sleazy NU guy who tries to hit on me at the Keg? How about this one: "I try to keep my lover a little uncertain about my commitment to him/her." Hello??!! What commitment? The only thing NU students commit themselves to is a 7-hour one night stand that involves about 20 minutes of action, an hour of embarrassed apologies, and a little less than six hours of drunken slumber in a cramped single bed. NU students aren't uncertain, their unresponsive.
The Main Event
The 24 speed dating participants signed in, had their pictures taken (I look like a bald boy in mine, by the way), and were forced to mingle in the art gallery before the actual speed dating began. At this point a group of girls huddled together in the middle of the gallery with a circle of boys adjacent to them. I felt like I was at Napoleon Dynamite's junior prom. What made this even worse was that the group of boys were all freshmen from Willard who "signed each other up"...I thought this was speed dating, not an intra-res. college dating service.
Some loners ventured out to examine the gallery's featured art. Call me crazy, but I just don't know how long one can stare at gift-wrapped shoe boxes in the shape of a cross with Christmas lights draped over it. What were these people doing here?
"I'm not going to lie, but the money had something to do with it," said speed dater Kasey, a Communications sophomore. Three other speed daters echoed her money-hungry reasoning. Did I buy it? Hell no. We were only being paid five bucks! You can't even buy a meal at Sargent for that amount. Doing it for the money? Yeah, and I write for the Chron because I don't think there are enough people on campus who hate me.
My Dates
I met 12 guys total, each one for four minutes. I've listed here my most memorable speed dates. Read at your own risk, especially if you were one of the guys I talked to.
Nobody puts baby in the corner
Yeah, so I would say talking to this kid was like watching grass grow, but that doesn't exactly do my four-minute speed date justice. Talking to this guy was more like talking to grass while watching it grow, realizing it's not going to talk back to you, but feeling obligated to continue chatting nonetheless. By chance he was assigned to the corner of the gallery, where he sat without a table (unlike most of the other stations, which consisted of a table and chairs). "They took away my table," was the first thing he said to me. I could tell he was traumatized and reassured him Professor Finkle didn't have anything against him. He thought it was a conspiracy; I felt like I was talking to a character on the X Files. Next.
Conversational Dysfunction Disorder (CDD)
I'm not sure if my conversation with this guy could have started off worse than it did. Granted, it may have been my fault, but I'm the one writing this article, damn it, and I can make you believe whatever I want because that's the power of journalistic bias! (Or so I've learned from the Daily.) Basically the convo went like this:
Him: Wow, four minutes really go by pretty fast.
Me: Yeah, did you know the average intercourse time between a man and woman is only two-and-a-half minutes? Imagine how fast that is.
Him: Uhhh, ummm, no.
Me: Well I guess that's good. You've obviously never had experience with a problem like that.
Him: Ummm, I'm just going to leave the conversation there.
And there it was left, never to be picked up again.
Wipe the footprints off your back
I'm not sure why, but often complete strangers feel like they can unload all of their emotional baggage on me upon first meeting them. It happens all the time in bars. I used to argue I was a guardian angel, but after I got caught by EPD for peeing on the side of Dempster at 3 a.m. (there was no way I was going to make it to a bathroom...don't even ask why I was on Dempster) I scrapped that whole touched by an angel thing. Nonetheless, in only four minutes, this guy expressed to me the pain and anguish the NU dating scene had caused him, and he was only in his freshman year. He told me he expected the girl speed daters to go into the night's event trying to make guys like them and then totally rejecting them. Ouch, this guy had a Samsonite full of scarred emotional tissue. I laughed nervously, got him to really like me, and rejected him later that night.
The Results
Unfortunately, I did not get any matches out of Tuesday's speed dating experience. However, I did garner one more embarrassing story to tell my grandkids when they ask me about my "fun years" at college. Or I might just take this one to the grave...along with the idiot who came up with this terrible idea.
Editor in Chief Baylee Simon is a Medill sophomore. E-mail her at b-simon@northwestern.edu.
