First Year Fantasy

Optimism in the Face of Guaranteed Heartbreak

On Wed., Sept. 2 at 8:30 a.m., 18-year-old first-year Jeremy Pomeroy expressed his thoughts to a crowd of reporters about his “certain future” at Eastern University in the phenomenon fondly known as romance. Showcasing “unbridled optimism” and bubbling over with “starry-eyed, overly romanticized visions of a love life unprecedented in the history of relationships at the collegiate level,” the spiky-haired, giddy-smiling Pomeroy laid out a “fairly simple” but “utterly incomprehensible” four-year plan for finding success in the field of romantic relationships during his tenure at Eastern, all the while completely oblivious of the four years of inconsolable despair and gut-wrenching heartbreak that are sure to come.

Romance—a mutual feeling of tender affection between two living things, human or non-human—is a subject about which Pomeroy “has not a worry in the world” as he heads into his first semester as an undergraduate.

“I mean, let’s look at this realistically,” Pomeroy says, scratching his premature chin scruff while staring into the brimming, sunlit dawn. “There’s like, what? A 70-to-30 female-to-male ratio here? And I’m here for the next four freaking years of my life? That’s easy!”

Despite one particularly cynical reporter’s persistent questioning as to whether the young idealist had any idea whatsoever of the imminent heartache that inevitably follows such teen-like, testosterone-fueled notions of invincibility, he proceeds to exclaim with over-dramatized, sweeping hand motions: “I mean, I don’t how you can possibly fail in a setting like this. So many options. So much time.” Then, brushing a fly out of his slicked-up back crop, he elaborated on his so-called “plan” for romantic relationships at the collegiate level in precise detail: “Basically, the big idea is to find my soulmate and marry her, like, the day I get out of here. I’m a little more flexible when it comes to starting things, I guess, so I’ll take the first few weeks to peruse a bit, use process of elimination, maybe make a checklist and go around campus figuring out who’s single, who’s not, you know. But I think things will probably be pretty settled by week two. You don’t wanna rush in too soon, and I think week one is a little extreme. But finding her during week two—that’s more than enough time.”

After press time, reporters were left in a congenial atmosphere of “fascination” at Pomeroy’s sheer optimism, especially considering the seemingly-endless four-year cycle of heartbreak he is about to undergo. Reporters agreed that, strange as it may seem, Pomeroy didn’t even seem to acknowledge “the dozens of girls that will turn him down halfway through the first date, the numerous relationships that will start out in an intoxicating state of pure infatuation and end in grudges of silence, and the nights he will spend staining his bed with tears and wishing his parents had never even dropped him off that fateful day a long, long time ago.”

Further coverage of Pomeroy’s inevitable misery and heavy-hearted affliction is sure to follow in the coming days.