Miami Student

Issue date: 10/23/07 Section: OpEd Page

Katelyn Hawthorne//For The Miami Student

Oh so many years ago, during college orientation, I remember my small group sitting in a circle just outside MET quad, timidly trying to figure out what the hell we were getting ourselves into with this college thing. My group leader had each of us write down a question on a slip of paper, without our names, so we could field our deepest anxieties without shame.

Most people had practical concerns. How long does it take to walk from one end of campus to the other? What's the process if we get sick?

I was already a bit embarrassed when she got to mine, but I desperately had to know: Is it difficult maintaining a long-distance relationship in college?

So many times have I read the oft-repeated tales of long distance relationship woes-high school sweethearts tragically divided by a one night stand, phone relationships that never made it. Yet where are the stories of the relationships that work? The ones that, against all odds, manage to fling themselves over the long-distance hurdle, steady themselves and keep on running?

Today my boyfriend and I celebrate our three-year anniversary, a monumental feat, some would say. Still together since our senior year in high school, it's been a perfectly lovely three years.

I might even say the happiest of my life so far, if I was being sentimental.

It's been a challenge, but surprisingly stress free, since both of us are emotionally stable.

However, Joel is an engineering major at the University of Cincinnati. I am an English and journalism major at Miami University. Random? That's what we've been told. Strangely compatible? Of course.

However, upon coming to Miami, I was deathly nervous as to the future of our relationship. Would college be the stroke of death, as I had heard it was? How could I go from seeing Joel everyday to once in a blue moon?

I don't know how I remember this-perhaps because I was staring at her so intently-but my orientation leader tipped her head back for a second while she pondered my question. I felt like everyone's mood, which was at first lighthearted, instantly dimmed.

She didn't know. She knew of people who had done it, but she couldn't make any judgments.

"I mean, I guess you have to like talking on the phone."

Talking on the phone has only been the short of it. The logistics of a long-distance relationship, as I've come to find out, involve so many tricks of emotional creativity, it sometimes boggles the mind of my friends with boyfriends and girlfriends conveniently nearby.

Continued...

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