Anyone who’s ever been on a clumsily orchestrated Tinder date will know that we need all the help we can get when it comes to dating. In fact, we need so much help that a University in Boston is offering students extra credit if they ask someone out on a date, IRL.
Before you scoff too much, the course from the Lonergan Institute, a philosophy research center at Boston College, includes discussions of personal ethical and moral choices, and the optional dating assignment is part of the syllabus. So that sort of makes sense. Although it’s probably not the sort of shit you’d get asked to do for PPE at Oxford, is it?
Course tutor Kerry Cronin explains that she started adding the extra credit element to the course eight years ago, when she was giving a lecture on campus hook-up culture, and one student asked her how you ask someone out on a date. And as she started to answer, she was asked to be more specific ‘like the actual words [you should use]’ she told The Boston Globe.
So Cronin is looking to revive and re-imagine the ‘lost social script’ of dating with her course, which she believes has been lost thanks to our hook-up culture (that again). Basically, she believes that most young people can get their emotional and social needs met through their friendship groups and so see hook-ups as purely physical. This means that we’ve forgotten how to date.
‘They [she means us] like to push themselves out of their comfort zone only if the energy and effort will equal success,’ Cronin says. ‘But when asking someone out, nothing can ensure the person is going to say yes.’
The dates she's getting her students to go on have certain boundaries – they must be between 45 and 90 minutes long, with a person the student has a legitimate romantic interest in, and the student needs to ask out their date face-to-face, not via text or email. The date cannot involve alcohol, kissing, or sex (no word yet on how these dates differ from a job interview, but never mind).
And the course is actually proving popular, with plenty of students signing up because the assignment forces them to get out of their comfort zone. But do we really need to be taught how to date?
A 20-something writer for Time magazine argued yesterday that student dating culture is alive and well, but actually, when was the last time you went up to someone and asked them out on an actual, proper date? Have you ever? A quick straw poll reveals that no-one on Team Debrief has ever managed it.
Granted we don’t have the same dating culture as America, and if anything, online dating and Tinder have probably made us more inclined to actually go for a meal or a drink with someone (as opposed to manically staring at your mate’s cousin’s friend intently across the pub over the course of a fortnight before eventually launching yourself on him outside the men’s toilets after six glasses of white wine). But it's still dating for dummies – asking someone you’ve matched with on an app but never met if they fancy a drink is very different to asking someone you already know and like out in REAL life.
And when you stop to think about it, actually deciding you potentially fancy someone enough to go on a date with them, asking them out (and risking potential rejection) and then making the effort to make plans to spend time with them, one-on-one, without getting hammered actually sounds quite nice and grown up. There’s something quite beguiling in the idea of cutting out the crap, finding out if someone actually likes you enough to spend time with you, and going from there.
So going on a mandatory date for extra credit might be a dubious extension to a philosophy degree, but Cronin might still have a point. Maybe we could all do with getting out of our comfort zones, facing our fear, and going on a date with it anyway.
Follow Rebecca on Twitter @rebecca_hol
Picture: Rory DCS
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.