<p>what do you guys think about this? It's weird for me because some of my girlfriends will just sleep with random guys after a party or such and wake up the next morning not exactly sure of what happened... is it still like this soph/junior/senior years?</p>
<p>As long as I'm not sexiled more than a few times per semester...:)</p>
<p>yea, this culture is something that actually makes duke stand out from the ivies! i'm not sure. it depends on how 'ready' the people are for relationships or not, i guess.</p>
<p>It calms down after freshman year, mainly because you stop going to frat parties where the vast majority of drunken, er, acquaintances are made. I mean, it's definitely still there but it will calm down.</p>
<p>There is a sort of dating subculture at Duke, but it's kind of a select few and most people are in pretty serious relationships. It's almost as though there's the hook-up culture, the relationships, and no middle ground, which is really frustrating. </p>
<p>The important thing is to just stay true to what YOU want and not be judgemental about what others do...which is hard at Duke when hooking up is so prevalent...but you'll find your niche.</p>
<p>I think this is how every college operates (hook-ups). People just seem to talk about it a lot more here. Haven't you noticed how many people are actually in relationships? It's not a small group. Take heart!</p>
<p>the number of freshmen in relationships seems to be significantly smaller than upperclassmen though. i hope to get in a relationship at least once during my time at duke personally, it would be nice. most of the freshmen i met (a small fraction by the way) don't seem to be very relationship-focused right now.</p>
<p>Yeah, I mean I think that comes with the whole excitement of freshman year. You're away from home and now it's time to experience those things that college is supposed to be about. I remember my freshman year being so frustrated with both the hook-up culture and the whole people up til 3 AM screaming in the halls drunk sort of deal.</p>
<p>Now, mind you, I've lived in Crowell and Edens 3B the past 2 years so they aren't the loudest, most exciting dorms, but I've found through living there and talking with my friends that both those are kind of things you get over. Maybe once a month I'll have to go and yell at people to shut up in my building. And my friends who were big into the hook-up culture, well, now they don't really ever go to parties and leave with random guys (albeit it's usually people they know, which is much better in my opinion). </p>
<p>It REALLY calms down for many people after freshman year when you start to get really serious about work and figuring out what you want to do with your life...it's not a 3x a week thing anymore.</p>
<p>Is Penn and Duke somewhat similar on the social scenes?
Curious because I saw a similar thread on the Penn forum and the current students have nearly the same answer...</p>
<p>No, Penn and Duke aren't really comparable. I guess they do sound alike on paper, but once you go out and experience the social scene at both schools you'll see that they're very very different. Just try to visit and hang out with some people, maybe go to some parties if you're curious about that. It'll show you a lot more than forum posts can get across.</p>
<p>i think out of any other school, duke and penn are pretty similar... duke is a lot like stanford as well. i think on terms of selectivity, duke and penn are the same. i know a bunch of people though who are at duke who, if they weren't waitlisted or such, would have been at stanford though.</p>
<p>Mondo...if you don't mind me asking...how old are you? I know someone in college who said that exact same thing the other day...wow. Sorry. Off-topic.</p>
<p>More people should be like you...hoping for a serious relationship. I, too, share that thought of at least being in one serious relationship in college.</p>
<p>moviefreak126: I'm 18 and am currently a freshman. Thanks for the support, being in a relationship is important to me and am hoping that something happens during my four years at Duke and best luck to you wherever you end up.</p>
<p>i'm not exactly looking for a relationship but not a hook-up either. but yeah, i do hope to be in a relationship in my duke career. i think a lot of people are looking for that it's just that in the campus culture (duke's hard academics, e.c.s,) people don't have the time to commit?</p>
<p>why don't we turn this into a personal ad forum? Mondo and Moviefreak, list your sex, height, hair color, interests...
haha joking</p>
<p>Hahaha...No.</p>
<p>haha! well, you can clearly see my gender to the left of this post. besides that, don't want to give away too much. :p except for the fact that i had vcu beating duke last year in march madness.. oops!</p>
<p>my grades actually suffer when i don't have a gf because i become obsessed with the hook-up scene, at least two nights a week. when i have a steady girlfriend, i have more control over when we can spend time together and also i tend to be sober which is also a plus when it comes to studying for tests the next day. ;). of course, i could just take the time to study more for tests, but that's no fun haha.</p>
<p>short answer is yes, it still happens.</p>
<p>and whether it calms down or not depends more on your friends as individuals than on duke trends (if you could even find one). on this point, i find myself in disagreement with loveduke22 for various reasons.</p>
<p>i think its fairly cyclical -- some people may have a period where they go crazy (and for so many of us it was first semester freshman year), then they realize they should stop, so they do, or they find a serious relationship for a bit or a consistent hookup so its no longer random, but then decide to go for some random play once again. and the thing that i disagreed with most was that it calms down when you're older and figuring out what you're doing in your life -- as a senior, i've found the opposite to be true, at least in my social circle. i don't know if it's the phenomenon of "oh crap, i have 1 semester left, let me fit it all in" or the "i don't know where i'll be six months from now, so why start anything serious? let's have fun tonight and not worry about tomorrow" but it's led to more random hookups in my group of friends than ever before (though at this stage, it's hard to find someone entirely random, even if you're meeting them for the first time yourself... a friend is bound to know the kid). maybe it's a way to kill off steam in the "i've been to 12 interviews this week, it's the weekend i'm going to get tanked and get some" sense, or my personal favorite, "2nd semester sr yr has no rules since when else in life are you ever going to behave like this again?" since duke or not, i hope that this phenomenon stays in college.</p>
<p>Ahh yeah- bluestar is totally right about senior year.</p>
<p>I guess as a junior my perception is kind of skewed because it's an awkward year where you're kind of done with the frat party scene but you can't really go to Sati's and whatnot yet...so you're kind of lacking a big social scene if you're an independent. </p>
<p>I don't know I think it's kind of like, you're whole experience is what you make of it basically, so you may hear all sorts of things like Duke is huge into the "hook-up culture" but it's kind of like what happens happens.</p>