Member-only story
A scientific approach to dating
The results surprised me
I have always been a nerd. That meant I didn’t date a lot until I got to college. I was too focused on my grades and sorta shy and awkward around men.
Then I went to MIT. All of a sudden, I was in nerd Valhalla. My social life took off and I never looked back.
Now, when I was an undergrad, I was committed to equality. I mean, I was majoring in engineering, a profession that was dominated by men and still is.
Because I wanted to be treated fairly as a woman in engineering, I wanted to also treat men fairly. I tried to treat them as fellow human beings, not as “men”, if that makes any sense. So, after freshman year, I decided I needed to ask men out and pay for dates at least half the time.
It was a disaster. And I have the records to prove it.
You see, I charted my love life using graphs. Yes, I really did. I did the same thing the one time I decided to get drunk, though I didn’t use graphics — but I did record exactly how much I drank at each stage, what my body’s reaction to each drink was, etc. I wish I could find that record… or maybe it’s just as well it got lost.
At any rate, my research proved that if I wanted to have a happy dating life, I could not treat men as equals.
