“You don’t understand,” my friend said as she tossed her thick brown curls away from her face. Her eyes narrowed as she continued, “Being single in college is way different from being single in high school.”

Now, not even a year later, I find myself single for the first time in two and a half years. Having been excluded from the dating scene since my junior year of high school, I’m now reflecting on those words. At the time they seemed ridiculous: how could dating in college be any different from high school, except that we don’t have curfews and we don’t have to worry about mom and dad walking in?

While listening to my girlfriends last semester, I thought it seemed kind of ridiculous the way, and how often, they talked about guys. It wasn’t, “Hey, was there any homework in biology last week?” It was, “So did you see that sexy guy who sits three seats up and four seats to the left of us?”

When I was dating someone it was like I had been given a VIP pass into the life of guys and how they act when they aren’t trying to impress you. I was also “granted permission” to hang out with other girls’ boyfriends without catching any dirty glances. During the past two weeks of being single, I have already noticed an extreme difference. My guy friends don’t treat me as “one of the guys” anymore. Now it’s a lame version of “Joey Tribbiani’s ‘Hey, how you doin’?’”

Whether it comes to flirting, accepting compliments or dating, I find myself out of practice. Do I say “thank you” when someone says I’m “hot?” Or do I blow it off as if I’ve heard it a million times? I’m not completely handicapped, but I still want to know the general “rules.”

It doesn’t feel like I have the freedom to wear completely absurd outfits to the first class of the day, or when I go out to meet friends. This lack of freedom has been created by my own psyche and friends propelling me towards finding a rebound, trying to match more of my clothes, or wearing more cover up.

I suppose I’ll just improvise for now which, I suppose, is what everyone else does when they come to college. None of these insights, however, has really suggested that what my friend said was right: is dating in college harder than it is in high school?