For girls, it was hard to make it through middle school without being convinced that you were weird if you had not had a boyfriend. And then, in the era of High School Musical and countless other teen movies starring adult actors, you entered freshman year with the notion that this was the normal time to fall in love, probably with your “soulmate.” This is sad to consider, but you spent a decent portion of the last few years of your life thinking about your love interests: impressing guys, liking guys, relationships with guys and whether or not that one specific guy liked you back. 

Do not let these four years be the same. 

As a freshman, I have only been here for a couple weeks, yet already I cannot count the number of girls who have mentioned to me that they wanted a boyfriend, hoped guys liked them, wished they had a significant other or just generally longed for someone to call them pretty, buy them food and tell them they love them. 

While it may be difficult to completely ignore the fact that the attractive person in your class could eventually evolve into more than the body that sits next to you, or that if you go to the party tonight you might just end up never having to be alone again, I think that is a pretty twisted mindset to go through college with, and that we should avoid at all costs.

I know that within these next four years it is even more probable than in high school that you may find the person you are going to end up with. In fact, according to a national survey done by the Independent Women’s Forum, 63% of women hope that they will find their husband in college.  But that does not mean you should be looking up and down for them, telling yourself everyone else has already found them, and making meeting them the goal of every night out. Nor should you be watching Netflix, going to a football game and talking with your friends all while thinking in the back of your head: “Wow, this will be so much better when I have a boyfriend,” the entire time. And this one’s especially for all the freshmen like me: Please, please, do not keep wondering why nothing has happened for you yet and why no one is interested in you when you have been here for literally a single month.

Just stop trying to force things. Stop wanting anything to happen. Stop caring. Stop thinking your life would become a million times better if you were not by yourself. Stop allowing yourself to be lonely. Try to take all the energy and space in your life that you are devoting to the future, and focus on actually enjoying your single life here in the present. Here at a place where you literally have endless opportunities and your whole life is ahead of you, maybe you could put all the love that you want to give some random, nameless dude into yourself and becoming the best version of you.  

Look, you’re not going to be single forever, okay? It is going to happen for you. But it will happen naturally. Ideally, it will happen when you least expect it. Because right now you should be so caught up in your own life— achieving the things that you want to achieve, being a good friend, helping people with way worse issues than relationship status—that it barely even crosses your mind. You should be embracing the confusion and falling in love with the fact that you have absolutely no idea what is going to happen or who you’re going to meet. You should be enjoying some of the most exciting, climactic chapters in your book, not trying to skip ahead at a time when it would not make any sense, or even be fulfilling, to know how it ends.

So, congratulations on being single. You’re awesome, and you’re doing pretty darn good on your own. You won’t be here forever, so please, buy yourself some flowers, take yourself on a hot date and try to enjoy it.

Megan Friend is a freshman majoring in marketing. Her column runs biweekly.