Greenhorn

During lunch on campus I found an interesting flyer on the table. It was an invitation for a speed dating event for students in one of the larger bars in the city centre. The leaflet got me into all kind of questions. Why did the organizer use an old fashioned flyer? I would suppose that nowadays students use all kinds of social media for advertising such an event. And why is such an event still necessary with all these online dating services available? I am certainly not an expert, but I suppose there are even online dating services focusing on students.

When I had a stopover at Heathrow airport a few months ago, I walked into one of the bookstores and was attracted by a large wall with copies of just one book, a book I’d seen already in Dutch bookstores. Time to check out what seemed to be extremely popular. I opened one book randomly in the middle and started reading. It was a story about a dominant man and a woman entering into what supposed to be an intense bondage love scene on a pool table: it was a scene from the famous bestselling erotic romance novel ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’, first of the Fifty Shades trilogy.

Back home, I started asking around who actually did read these books. One female friend admitted she read the first two books and she even liked it. A colleague told me that a female friend admitted to him she was interested playing scenes of the book together. He told me was he not sure whether he wants to meet her again! With millions copies sold worldwide I suppose many female students have read it as well. While finishing my lunch I thought about the young male greenhorn, desperately seeking a date with the girl who sits next to him in the classroom, now in a bar in a speed dating session, not able to answer any questions about the books his female opponent has read over and over again. Poor boy, thinking he could be Mister Darcy.

Hans-Georg van Liempd is program manager internationalisation at TiU and president of EAIE. He blogs for Univers.