Hooking Up : Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus, Kathleen Bogle [list of ebook readers .TXT] 📗

My exchange with Clark, a 25-year-old alumnus from State University, further illustrates this point:

KB: What about since you graduated from college a few years ago, did social life change since you left?

Clark: Yes, greatly.

KB: How has it changed?

Clark: For one thing I [cannot] go out almost every night. I think for me . . . since I am working full-time and I am living on my own, I am spending a lot more time by myself, to be honest.

Living in a residence hall on campus: your friends are next door, your friends are upstairs. You open the door and there are always people around, there are always things going on not related to a work situation. There are people sitting in the lounge playing cards [or] throwing a Frisbee in the hallway.

You can sit outside and have a cigarette, something like that.

. . . And I think being removed from that was a big adjust-ment for me personally.

KB: Do you feel like your life changed overnight or did you think it was a process over time of changes?

Clark: I’d say it was a process. Since graduation a lot of my close-knit friends did stay either associated with the university or at the university as graduate students working there [and they still lived in town]. Since [that first year after graduation] that has decreased. So I was still always in town [the first year out]. On the weekends I would go down there and crash, sleep on people’s couches. I would hang out in town; we still went to football games. I went to homecoming two years ago. Since then there are other “adult demands” quote/unquote [that] have crept into the schedule. And even for my close friends, their schedules have gotten more complicated too. My friend got married. They own a house now. So he spends a lot of time with her and [her] family. It’s not my schedule pulling me away; it is everyone’s schedule pulling them in a different direction.

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As individuals became immersed in their new environments, they found new rules and expectations for their social lives. During college, most of the alumni I spoke with had been immersed in the partying and hooking up scene. After college, they continued alcohol-centered socializing, primarily in small groups at bars. However, in terms of the opposite sex, men and women largely abandoned the hookup script in favor of formal dating.

THE SHIFT TO FORMAL DATING

The men and women I interviewed from both Faith and State universities said that, after college, going on dates was the norm.

KB: Does the hookup scene still exist now like it did in college?

Can you go to a bar and go home with someone [to hook up]?

Will: I think it definitely changes. There are more dates now . . .

where you meet someone in a bar [and] they are a complete stranger, they don’t know your personality at all so you are more likely to have a conversation, have a great time that night, maybe hang out with them for a couple hours. Sometimes maybe a girl goes home with a guy [to hook up] . . . but I think that’s a small percentage now. I think it’s mostly you exchange phone numbers or make plans [to go on a date].

[Emphasis by interviewee, a 24-year-old alumnus of Faith University]

Elizabeth: It is kind of funny because no one has really ever asked me out before. [During college] I never had a random guy say:

“Can I have your number? Can I call you?” And then it’s like six or seven people asked me out. Within two months I would say seven people asked me out . . . it was weird having people be like: “Can I have your number and maybe can we go out sometime?” [25-year-old alumnus of Faith University]

Carol: Like I said in college no one dated, really. . . . Now I would say people do go on dates . . . they actually do date someone.

[24-year-old alumnus of Faith University]

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Alumni stressed that dating was completely new for them. As college students they only went out on a formal date after they had hooked up with someone repeatedly and that person became their boyfriend/girlfriend. Since many hookup partners never reached the point of a committed relationship, many had never been on a date at all.

Carol: He asked me for my phone number and he called me the next day and we talked [on the phone] a couple days and

[then] we went out for dinner . . . we went out on [one] date and that was it.

KB: What was that like when you hadn’t done that much?

Carol: It was a little weird. Like I said, in college I never went out on dates, the [only] dates I ever went on was with my [college] boyfriend, so it was weird. [24-year-old alumnus of Faith University]

The only major similarity between hooking up in college and dating after college is the location where men and women meet. The alumni I spoke with indicated that they still primarily meet people at bars or parties; however, what happens after the initial meeting changes.1 Rather than departing from the bar or party to hook up, as they did in college, generally the man asks the woman for her phone number and subsequently contacts her to arrange a date.

When college students hook up, more often than not nothing develops between the two parties beyond the night of the hookup. However, in cases where the hookup partners do become involved after the initial hookup, students would refer to their relationship status as “seeing someone,” “talking,” “dating,” or “hanging out.” This represents an in-between stage, beyond a one-night stand, but not a full-fledged relationship. Men and women who are in this type of relationship do not actually go on formal