Mike Durante and Leah Rappaport

This week, Vox conducted a social experiment, sending a sophomore girl and a senior boy to UG to see if sparks flew. To play it safe, we picked two students who said in their surveys that they both love to party (“I like classy wine parties or Tequila-[i]nduced dance parties. Those are my religious services,” she said).

She wants someone passionate about what they do, and he’s heavily involved with EcoAction. He’d rather date somebody who has completely different interests, and she’s involved in DC Schools and into art. Does age make a difference?

Turns out it does—at least for these two.

Leah Rappaport (COL `12) arrived first, followed shortly by Mike Durante (MSB `10). Neither got anything to eat or drink, and for about forty-five minutes they chatted about “the usual stuff,” Durante said.

“She was pretty interesting because I’m MSB and she’s in Art History.” Durante added, “I always find myself talking about the same things, like corn and bottled water, so that was definitely different.”

Corn be damned, she helped him muddle through his thoughts about what to do after graduating and they talked about the idea of the date itself.

“You can’t really go wrong with someone who signed up for a blind date on a blog they read,” Durante said. “That’s a pretty cool person.”

Amen to that. But in the end, the years caught up with them.

Rappaport explained, “He was talking about getting a job and I was talking about declaring a major.”

And as a senior, said Durante, “I’m pretty clearly not looking for a long-term girlfriend or anything like that. I’m planning on leaving D.C. next year to start a career. I have no idea what I’m going to be doing.”

At the close of the date, neither got a phone number and they didn’t make plans to meet up again. As Durante put it, they did a “see-you-around-campus thing.”

Now we know: never doubt Shakespeare.

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Thanks to Uncommon Grounds for providing the free food and drinks.  Photo by Jackson Perry.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 3:00 pm and is filed under Leisure, Vox Populi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.