They spend how much time, now?

Recently, my friends and I have been subjected to the painful yearning of dates ending on the front steps of our building. Many, many dates. Once, we even walked through three dates ending simultaneously. Yes, that’s right. Three different couples, all desperate to not bid their lovers adieu. As someone horribly single, it’s painful and activates my gag reflex. As a hopeless romantic (and an English student), it’s heartwarming to see relationships blossom—even though the couples are always right in front of the stairs and always, always refuse to move for people who are carrying three containers of Hewitt vegetables, struggling to find their ID card in the cavernous abyss of their tote bag.

But, I digress.

Instead of moping or throwing tomatoes at them, I will turn to math. My inquiry: how much time do these Barnard lovers spend saying goodbye?

Quick maths:

  • There are about 23 students per floor (besides the first floor) in 616 W 116th St. and there are 10 floors in the building. (23 x 10) + 5 = 235 students in 616.
  • This study shows that on average, women and men have about five to seven hookups in their college career and, on average, hook up twice as much as they date. 6 (six is between five and seven) = 2 x amount of dates. 6 / 2 = 3. So, the average college student goes on three, maybe four, dates during their whole college career.
  • 4 (for the sake of the math) / 4 years of college = 1 date per year
  • 235 students in 616 x 1 date per student per year = 235. 616 residents will be going on at least 235 dates this year
  • (Let’s assume these dates are dinner dates. Maybe dinner and a movie, or dinner and ice cream, or dinner and…) Dinner dates usually take around three to four hours. There are 2 hours for dinner, and 1 hour for potential after-dinner extracurricular activities + 30 minutes (x 1 hour / 60 minutes—just in case you forgot how to convert minutes to hours) for the coming and going = just about 3.5 hour-long dates
  • Since I’m focusing on the lingering goodbyes, (the “I don’t want to leave you’s”) that’s 235 dates x 0.5 hours per coming-and-going-and-goodbyeing time = 117.5 hours
  • 117.5 hours x (1 day / 24 hours) = 4.9 days = 5 days
  • Five days is a school/work week. That’s 117.5 hours, or five whole days, of time spent chatting with and blinking coquettishly at your romantic partner.

Other things you can do in that time:

  • Go to most of the 2022 Coachella festival. You’d miss just one day—one day of artists you wouldn’t have wanted to see, anyway.
  • Read Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (which has a word count of 88,942 words) 15 times over. That is, of course, if you read 200 words per minute. (More quick, quick maths: 200 words / 1 minute x 60 minutes / 1 hour x 24 hours / 1 day = 290,000 words (a day) / 90,000 words = 3 times a day x 5 days = you could read the whole book 15 times.) You could really, really get into it. Maybe Big Brother will start watching you…
  • Listen to Red by Taylor Swift 110 times to prepare for the re-recording in November. (Here’s the math, you nerds, you: Red is around 65 minutes long. There are about 7200 minutes in five days. 7200 / 65 = 110)
  • Attend 94 back-to-back three-credit lecture courses—courses that last one hour and fifteen minutes. That’s 12:00 am to 1:15 am, 1:11 am to 2:26 am, and so on and so forth. Your brain would rot, but you’d graduate. Well, you’d more than graduate. In fact, you’d graduate twice—and a little. (Okay, okay. Here’s more math: 94 classes x 3 credits = 282 / 122 credits to graduate = 2 full Barnard undergraduate degrees and a little.)
  • Drive to California (from New York) and back, with time to spare. (This drive takes 42 hours. Why don’t YOU do the math this time?)
  • Make five different focaccias. According to this recipe (yes, it’s Bon Appetit, I know, but, it’s so good.) you should let focaccia rise for, at most, one day. That means you could make at least five. One could be garlic and rosemary. Another could be pesto. Another could be tomatoes. One could just be plain, salted. One could be cheese. (Now I’m hungry.)

The entirely romantic exterior of 616 via Barnard ResLife