My relationship with Earl Gregg Swem

All the girls LOVE Earl Gregg Swem. How can you not? He’s beautiful, full of knowledge, and makes a great cup of coffee. If you spend most of your week with this man, you are pretty much guaranteed to do well on whatever exams you are studying for. Really, he has everything you could need to succeed. And not to mention he’s nationally ranked 8^th compared to his competitors.

But yet, I resisted.

As a freshman, I was stubborn and independent. I didn’t want to be tied down to one place, one man. Earl Gregg just wasn’t enough for me.  I wanted to be out socializing, meeting new friends. Your freshman year is a time of adjustment, obviously, as you adapt to the different classroom environments and workloads. With the small freshman seminars, there is a large emphasis on discussion and active participation. Then you also often find yourself in large introductory courses such as Psychology or another lecture class. In between, you have to adjust to the varying teacher expectations and classroom settings. It requires hard-work. It requires motivation. And these were two things I was not ready to give into so easily.

That’s relationships for you – they require both of those qualities as well. You have to put in face time with your significant other. Just passing by Earl Gregg did not strengthen my relationship with him, or my GPA. We needed long hours spent alone together to work out many of our issues (and history papers). There were even times during finals when we would stay up together all hours of the night. When work got too much, though, Swem would frustrate me. I would feel trapped.

Yet again, Earl Gregg proves his perfection. Even if I did feel somewhat stifled, he could adjust to whatever my studying needs were. If I needed to be around people and stimulated by occasional conversation, he had places he could take me for that. If I needed complete, dead silence and concentration, he would take me on dates to our favorite places where even loud flip flops weren’t allowed. Yes, Earl has thought of everything. And as I slowly outgrow my restless freshman ways, I realize it is finally time to settle down and put a little more effort into our relationship. It’s not an exclusive, binding contract – its flexible. He doesn’t mind when I bring my friends to meet him too, or even other boys. Earl Gregg simply tries to be here for me and support me however he can.

What a sweetheart. Thanks, Earl.  See you for another date tomorrow.

– Anna Mahalak ’12