So I suppose I’m late in finding out that a former Princeton alum wrote this letter to editor for her alma mater’s student newspaper that went viral last year, and this month, she is publishing a book called Marry Smart, a guide on how young women of college age and just slightly beyond can “marry smart” and live their lives to their full potential. The basic gist of her letter to the editor, as well as her book, is that our modern society and colleges across the world for that matter have put way too much emphasis on career track and planning for young women. Instead of focusing so much time and energy on careers, women during college should be investing more of their time and energy in finding their future husbands because that is their prime and most beautiful time of life (that is subjective…) and will be the time of their lives when they have the smartest and most attractive male options at the tips of their fingers. The window will soon pass, and if they miss the boat, they may never find their true loves of their lives and may need to settle on someone they are not madly in love with who will never truly fulfill them.

While this sounds like something I would initially get mad about, I’ll be honest and say there’s a lot of truth to this. While I would not take her advice literally (meaning, I think your potential for finding a life mate is over after you get that college diploma), I do think it’s important to acknowledge that you should never be thinking “career OR dating/relationship” or “studying OR dating/relationship.” If you can’t “multi-task” with launching your career and a steady relationship now (I put that in quotations because I think the concept of “multi-tasking” in balancing school and dating or career and a relationship is bullshit. If you can have friends and family and study, why can you not have a boyfriend and study?), what makes you think you will one day be able to balance career, marriage, raising kids, potentially even taking care of your elderly parents and in-laws, social life, and all of life’s everyday demands?

It’s good to be open to meeting new potential mates at any time of your life and not immediately x them out because of a stressful job or being in medical school. She’s sadly right – none of us are getting any younger, and I’ll be one of the first to acknowledge that men are selfish jerks and do not really care about your “internal clock” (you know, your egg count and how it significantly goes down after 30, and gets in the grey-to-black area after 35. This doesn’t affect them; it affects you), and their pool of options gets larger (meaning, they ARE looking at younger women, even the ones just fresh out of college when they are 35 and you are 32, and guess who seems more attractive?), while ours will get smaller. Men in college for the most part are immature beyond belief when compared to their female counterparts, but the rare gems that are mature enough should be considered.