Our relationship, albeit completely platonic and not romantic, is somewhat of an anomaly on Colgate’s campus: we’ve stayed together all four years. It all started freshman year in East Hall, and from the beginning, we shared

everything: clothes, boys, illnesses and drunk shenanigans. But really, we’ve been there for each other through it all; we’ve cheered together over job offers, held each other’s hair back in the Jug bathroom and helped each other through some difficult breakups. We’ve been in the trenches together, and let us tell you, we’ve seen some sh*t. Now, as wise seniors, we consider ourselves to be erudite scholars on the unspoken rules of Colgate’s bizarre hookup culture. And this is what we’ve learned: be your own wing woman.

It used to go down like this—freshman year, we’d crowd around a singular cell phone, eyes glued to the screen, afraid we might miss the three second Snapchat from that senior in Phi Tau who one of our friends kissed the night before. Suddenly, the dorm is transformed into an auction house and the bidding begins for the best response. In the end, the Snapchat was always answered with a hybrid of all the responses. Every girl involved walked away feeling proud of her devilish wit and charm. How could we possibly fail when we had the opinions of our entire friend group of ten other girls to back us up? What boy could resist our collective charisma? To our own surprise, we definitely could fail and we definitely did. Sometimes a guy’s just not that interested, even in a response artfully curated by 12 minds.

We won’t knock this formula completely. In fact, it would be a lie to say that this isn’t the recipe we both followed to enter into two very serious long-term relationships at Colgate. But that’s just the thing: in these relationships, we realized that we’d have to go it alone. After the party, at the end of the day, we learned that it’s just you and the other person lying in bed. So god hopes you two can kick it on your own because we all know you can’t fit the entire friend group in a Twin XL.

This year we’re both single again (contact our editor for our numbers). And to be honest, sometimes it’s daunting, because while we’ve

matured (we hope), Colgate’s hookup culture is exactly how we left it—full of ghosters, tricksters and guys who run for the hills when you look in their direction on the academic quad. The role of our friends, however, has changed for the better. We’re no longer the girls who sit hunched around a tiny screen in a cramped dorm room, relishing in three seconds of caption-less selfies. Now, we’re the girls who wake up every morning ready for the rundown of everyone’s hilarious adventures from the night before. Every awkward conversation with a guy isn’t DEFCON 5. Rejection doesn’t have quite the same sting when you take yourself half as seriously and every boy you talk to even less seriously.

We’ll leave you with this: the beginnings of a flirtationship should not call for a summit meeting with your entire friend group. Someone liking you for you is way more fulfilling than someone liking you for you + all of your friends’ one liners. Of course it’s fun to sit around and strategize and gossip; we’re not saying we’ve stopped doing that. We’ve just realized being yourself is a lot sexier. So get out there, don’t take anything too seriously and support your girls from a safe distance.