#6: thinking that laughing about ring by spring will distract others from the fact that you got engaged in april

From week one, freshman are introduced to and encouraged to laugh at the Ouachita myth of "ring by spring or your money back." Yet, in lieu of all this giggling and mockery, one can easily overlook the fact that this myth is a real phenomenon. I personally love Spring at Ouachita. I feel so satisfied in my singleness when I open up my facebook homepage every week to find that BAM! six more Ouachita couples have gotten engaged. And each year I eagerly look forward to Marriage, Dating, and Engagement week, fun-filled with a variety of practical talks that reassure us doubting-Thomases that joy and singlehood are not mutually exclusive. And I, for one, really enjoyed that weekend retreat.

All of Ouachita joins in the limbo dance between brushing off dating and encouraging Ouachita students to bag a spouse, and bag 'em quick. Though professors will be the first to poke fun at the "ring by spring myth," they will also be the first to mention that the awkward freshman sitting beside you during WOW or Bible Survey could very well be the one. Furthermore, many a student has scoffed at Ouachita with its over-eager, fundamentalist, Victorian match-making ways only to get engaged to a fellow Ouachitonian second semester of senior year. We know you are. We know what you did. All the while, those who unfortunately remain lonely...I mean single** up through senior year fear that someday soon they will become that awkward, unmarried, pew-to-themselves church-goer who gets banished to the widows' and divorcees' Sunday school class and gets match-made with every schmuck who breathes and owns a Bible. And while they wait for that day to come, they secretly wonder, "will I ever have sex?"




**This joke was stolen straight from Jonathan Acuff