It’s that time of year again: the point in the semester where the stress you’ve been dreading since you anxiously thumbed through the 8-page syllabuses you received on August 28 is now visible in the wrinkles on your brow line. It’s clear that deadlines are rapidly approaching as professors begin discussing exam schedules and 399 groups are going out, as good disciples do, to the other groups, sharing the good news they’ve concluded in their mentor classes.

No shave November has arrived and beards are running rampant around campus on every male. That is, except for guys like me: guys who are rapidly approaching what is easily the most important deadline of our college careers—graduation day, but more importantly, Senior Scramble. That’s right, men of fine statue, great humor, and undeniable defined jaw lines (much like myself) cannot partake in the most enjoyable festivity the month of November has to offer, not because our hormones make it physically impossible, like the freshman. Rather, it is because the women we seek to wed cannot see our fine statute, great humor, and undeniable defined jaw line behind our luscious mustaches and beards.

Three years ago I began the search for “the chosen one.” While I thought it would be easy with the northwest Iowa mentality and my charming personality, not to mention looks that could melt an iceberg and muscles bigger than the freshmen girls’ hair, here I am, waiting by The Gift to approach the first girl to catch my eye.

Here’s the difficult part about girls around here, or rather, what makes it even more difficult to find “the one” on Dordt’s campus. Two words: Freshman Frenzy. If you don’t know what I’m talking about it, you’re probably in denial that your current relationship is a result of that hectic phase of freshman year (generally falling between the first and second week of October, right after Tri-State) where everyone is looking for “the one” that looks sufficiently attractive on DENIS to give a ring to before spring. If you do know what I’m talking about, then you understand that faulty attempts at the Freshman Frenzy result in broken hearts and a lack of women to pursue because of the Bro Code. She was talking to my best friend, off limits. She sat on the cushion nearest the crack on the couch in my neighbor’s dorm, off limits. And so it continues to dwindle down to a few, select women available on campus.

So here I sit by the Gift: clean-shaven, open-minded (in everything but good, Reformed thought), and willing to spend a few bucks on a date to McDonald’s before I have to start paying student loans: waiting for the one (preferably blonde, about 5’8”, eats corn, and can drive a tractor) to walk by in those Miss Me jeans and state volleyball sweatshirt.

Mr. Right, Columnist