Getting a glimpse of your campus crush

So it's about 11:45 a.m., you're casually standing outside of Jepson soaking up some rays and chatting with your friend. You throw your head back in a particularly aggressive laughing fit as your crush walks out of the Jepson building.

You pretend that you haven't seen him yet as he walks toward the Jepson circle where you happen to be sitting. Like a true crush stalker, you proceed to look up at him every five seconds to make sure he is still walking in your direction and, once he does see you, you talk very intensely to your friend without looking up until he gets close enough to give him the "oh, fancy seeing you here" eyebrow raise and a slightly awkward and just a bit too excited "Hey!"

Now to an innocent bystander this is a cute, endearing, semi-socially awkward puppy-love scene. But, to the trained eye it should be obvious that the gal in question was well aware that her crush had a 10:30 a.m. class and specifically sought out her favorite wing lady to strategically stand there looking like they were having a spontaneous, very funny, casual conversation that just happened to be taking place right in her crush's line of vision.

Like any girl who has done thorough research on her crush, she knew that he would have to walk right across the Jepson circle on his way to grab lunch at the Pier, which he does every Monday and Wednesday. The fact that she was sitting there enjoying the sunshine is just a sheer coincidence.

Plus, if your crush voices to anyone else that he thinks that you're only there because you're trying to catch glimpses of him during the day, he sounds like a self-centered, egotistical piece of crap who thinks he's God's gift to Earth, so you're totally covered. Richmond is a small campus right?

Let's talk about casual creeping for a second. We all do it -- don't even try to deny it. Don't try to tell me that you have never once altered your route to class or gone to D-hall at a certain time, or waited a bit too long outside of Jepson, or gone up to the second floor of the gym to "stretch" in hopes of running into your crush.

I will admit that sometimes I do things a bit differently than other people, but there is no way that I'm alone on this one. If you don't want to admit it, or say, write a column about it, that's totally fine, not everyone feels the need to constantly embarrass themselves like I do. But while you can lie to the rest of the world, you can't hide the reality from yourself.

On a campus like Richmond where everyone knows someone who knows your crush and/or has hooked up with him or her already, it's pretty darn easy to figure out where exactly he or she will be during the day. Perhaps it might start to get a bit iffy if you run into him every single day in the same exact place, but if you manipulate the situation well enough, you should have no trouble ensuring that he always sees you in your cutest outfits.

We say we don't really play games, but let's be real: crushing, courting, chasing tail... It's mostly just a fun, time-passing activity to keep your brain from turning into a pile of academic goop, and to distract you from the reality that life after college is going to start any second now.

So get out there, do some reconsidering, dress up like Nancy Drew if you must and find that love interest of yours after his class. You may run the risk of looking slightly like a creeper, but 20 years from now it won't matter anyway!