EDITORIAL: Take this Valentine's Day to treat the most important person in your life — yourself
As Feb. 14 approaches, love is in the air — which means different things for different people, depending on your relationship status.
As we grow older, Valentine’s Day moves away from the time of paper card and candy giving and into the territory of Instagram shots of fancy dates and Snapchat stories of grandiose expressions of love.
And in the era of social media envy, that can be especially hard as you watch your friends in relationships go out Feb. 14 while you binge watch yet another Netflix show you’ve already seen before.
Valentine’s Day can be especially challenging if you're single or just got out of a relationship.
For some students, this can be a conflicting time because it could be the first chance they have to date as a gay or lesbian student hailing from a small town with an even tinier LGBT population in it.
But the secret to Valentine’s Day is this: It’s just another day.
In the grand scheme of things, whether you have a date this Wednesday or not won’t matter in due time. It might not even matter in a week.
The era of finding yourself at college has been redefined since our parent's day and age. It’s no longer about going to school to find a partner. It’s about seeking an education and bettering yourself.
It’s about finding what makes you you, and then figuring out a way to translate that into a career or a passion. It’s also about learning how to be happy — not forcing yourself into a relationship in order to fit an outdated, preconceived notion that you have to meet your future spouse by graduation.
That’s not just silly, it’s becoming more statistically unlikely. A 2013 study indicated only 28 percent of people attended the same college as their future spouse, according to USA Today, although — in all fairness — that number increased exponentially when considering religious colleges.
Don’t make yourself miserable this Valentine’s Day.
It's a day for expressions of love — so get your roommates together and go out to Olive Garden or find your best friend and hang out at The Bird Bar & Grill. You don’t have to be romantically linked to spend Valentine’s Day with people you love and appreciate.
Having a happy Valentine’s Day doesn’t start and end with being in a relationship.
It begins by doing what makes you happy.
