Where do YOU fall?

The Geek Hierarchy

I feel this is unfairly biased towards sci-fi fans, but if I use a little imagination, I probably would find myself in the fifth level deep: Erotic Fanfic Writers.

I mean, I don't, but I would.

Do Teenagers Actually Talk to Each Other?

I've been getting a string of text messages from what I presume is a teenage girl at a high school in the Portland Metropolitan Area.

10:08 PT ET - "Sup! I got ur from laurel!"

Got my what from who? WHO ARE YOU?!

10:39 PT ET - This is Nina. Laurel have me ur #. Is that ok?

Okay? I don't even know a Laurel. Wait, let me check Facebook. Nope, the only Laurel is Canadian and I doubt you're the Nina from GU that I barely knew.

10:41 PT ET - Laurel [some last name that I wont divulge out of respect, though I will say her last name is similar to an English heavy metal rock star's], Duh!

Duh? I thought I told you I have no idea who that is, and yet you're still wasting my precious texts that I never use! How dare you!

10:49 PT ET - U go 2 [name of high school...no wait, MIDDLE SCHOOL in the Portland Area], rite? And u no hoo i am rite?

Who taught you how to spell? No, again, I have no idea who you are and I didn't even know your school was a middle school until I looked it up just now. I thought you were a stupid high schooler!

10:53 PM ET - Wut? Ur name is Kassie, rite?

Man I can't even type how you text. I have this urge to write in English, but for the sake of being fair to what you actually sent me, I must transcribe your attempts at communication onto this blog.

Oh, and No! I am a guy who graduated COLLEGE recently so you definitely have the wrong number.

Funny, I haven't received a text back since I told her something along those lines--no, wait,
a text!

11:15 PM ET - Ok. I guess i do have the rong #. Sry 2 bug u. Buhbye!

...good grief. Is this world going crazy?

I guess I have my answer.

"Everyone's getting married!"

How often have we said that to each other? Especially upon seeing someone change his or her relationship status in Facebook from "In a Relationship" to "Engaged," or worse, from "Engaged" to "Married." Actually, what's the worst (in my opinion) is the wedding picture albums. Page after page of overly sentimental photography with cliche poses. Maybe with one of those pictures where everything is black and white except for the bride's bouquet. Yeah.

We all assume that Gonzaga grads seem more likely to get hitched soon after graduation than, say, EWU graduates. I don't know if that's actually true, but I'm willing to bet that there are more "committed relationships" (excuse my quotation marks, I'm a jaded single girl now) coming out of GU than a lot of the big public universities around here. My 19-year-old cousin recently informed me that 80% of people find their mate in college. Now, that could be a bogus statistic, and my generalizations about GU-vs.-public-U.s could be way off, but still. It is a little disturbing to see the wedding album of childhood friends or the kid who sat in front of you in Western Civ, isn't it? I think so.

So I did a little number crunching. Bear in mind that a.) I'm at work and therefore distracted, b.) I'm terrible at math and numbers and didn't pay attention in stats, so the results of this research are probably skewed. But I took a look at my Facebook friends, specifically those who graduated in 2007 or who I considered part of my class, and found that:

50 out of 124 are single (40.3%)
38 are in a relationship (30.6%)
5 are engaged (4%)
7 are married (5.6%)
24 provided me with no data, but are probably single or casually dating (19.4%)

Okay, this seems fairly normal for a set of 22- or 23-year-old college grads, right? I think so. I've had friends complain to me when they were single (moreso when I was in a relationship) that "everyone is part of a couple," but my little sample set proves that's not true, which I already assumed. I think that sometimes the nature of our peers' relationships (dare I say codependent and a little overboard at times?) make it seem like that's the trend.

Other conclusions: I have a lot of married friends. And I can think of at least three more offhand who are married but didn't fit the 2007-graduate criteria. I would've assumed that engagements would be more common than marriages at this point, but apparently not. Maybe that means that there was an initial wave of getting married right after college and us unmarried types can rest easy knowing that there won't be any more wedding albums cropping up for awhile? Also, there are a surprisingly lot of people whose relationship status I'm unaware of, but I guess that's because I have a lot Facebook friends who are more like distant acquaintances than actual friends. Oh well. Like I said, I don't think they'd change the percentages too much anyway.

In conclusion, I want my friends to get married so I can go to a party with all my old friends and get drunk. But I also want us to stay young for a little while longer, okay?