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Hey There Lonely Kid: Being Singular at NYU in NYC
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Jaws music.
That's what I hear in my head around this time of year when I see the superfluous amounts of pink hearts, overstuffed teddy bears, and indecent volumes of chocolate looming on my horizion when I walk into Duane Reade.
Valentine's Day AKA Singles Awareness Day is descending with all it's crepe paper vengence, kids, and you can run but you just can't hide. If you've got someone, congrats, enjoy the day. Stop reading this article now. If you're single like the last pringle, welcome to my boat. We'll be serving pints of ice cream for you to cry yourself to sleep in shortly, but don't bust out the giant spoon just yet. There seems to be hope.
Way back in November, when the only thing you had to worry about were the pros and cons of seconds at Thanksgiving dinner as opposed to sugary sweet existential angst, the New York Magazine published an article by Jennifer Senior entitled "Is Urban Lonliness a Myth?" . Fantastically written, and contributed to by Eric Klinenberg, Professor and academic director in NYU's department of Sociology, it's all about where that lonely feeling comes from, how New York City is actually one of the least lonley places to live these days, and how it all somehow connects to and paralles the internet.
It's also six pages long. However, even if you're not a speed read freak like me, it's a great article to take in, especially for people our age. I'll bet your favorite thing to hear from mom and pop is 'Don't worry, you'll find someone later, focus on the schooling we're paying so much for. You don't need a boyfriend/girlfriend' blah blah blah. Parents just don't understand, but Senior does.
James Moody, a network guru at Duke University, notes that there’s a time in the lives of young professionals when they retreat deep into their silos, trying to make partner, get tenure, write their books, complete their residencies, or whatever it is that they’re hoping to do. If they’re lucky, they’re married, which helps sustain them through the work isolation. Then the next stage comes when they’re working hard in their newly minted careers (as partners, tenured professors, authors, doctors, or whatever it is they’re doing). And again, they’re fairly cut off socially, but they’re buoyed, one hopes, by the presence of a family at home. But if someone is out of step with this pattern—not partnered off, say, while still working really hard—New York can be a challenging place.
Senior is referring to grad students and fresh out of college people, but let's talk about us; the lowly undergrad just starting out in life, new sprung and scrappy from high school. We've got fight, we've got spirit, we've got loads of homework, face unparalled amounts of debt that we'll have to reconcile with in the near future, and some heavy choices to make. We're working really hard too and everything keeps changing on us. It would be nice to have some one around to help hold up the world.
The kicker of this article is, because of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr, you don't have to go it alone. Turns out those of us who are Facebook addicts and Myspace hos are really healthy. Senior demonstrates that what we do online actually paralells what we do offline in the company of friends. You e-mail, chat with, and friend request people who you interact with in real life.
Duh.
So, sadly, we can no longer mock the WoW kids cause they actually have lives. Go figure. At this point you may be ranting and raving about being independent and learning to be ok on your own, and I agree with you. Just so long as you understand one thing; in the words of my good friend Briana James, "We aren't meant to do it alone. If we were, there would be a billion little planets with one person on each doing it on their own."
Feel better? I do. Go read the rest.
By the by, if you're a single gentle-lad above the age of stupid, shoot me an e-mail.
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