All the Single Ladies, All the Single Ladies
BY CÜNEYT YILMAZ (ECON/IV)
cuneyt_y@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
It was in the year 2009 that an anonymous girl made the following confession in the comment section of my blog: "I've fallen in love with you by reading your blog." Being the moody, cold-blooded blogger I was back then, her confession was received with only slight interest on my side, which is normal given the cynic's hat I used to wear every time I logged in to the Internet. In other words, I didn't care at all. Instead, I decided to let her enjoy her one-sided obsession and wait for her to realize that I wasn't the right person for her, until…
I decided that I was, in fact, the right person for her. This happened thanks to a collaboration of two distinct factors. One was the hormonal business cycles I used to experience. The second had to do with the fact that she was going to study economics at another prestigious university (nothing that could beat our beloved Bilkent in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, but still an acceptable one). Hearing that, the economist inside me punched me on the nose and told me to sit back and enjoy the extra income that my blogging activities generated. Let me clarify something here, though: I didn't enter the blogging industry to make girls fall in love with me. But why not give it a shot when a beautiful and forlorn girl is in love with you? I mean, she is beautiful, she studies at a well-known university and, better yet, she knows how to appreciate my writing…I justified myself with thoughts like these.
However, it turns out that platonic love isn't, economically speaking, a durable good; that is, it doesn't last long and wears out quickly. Otherwise, I wouldn't have found out when I got back to her -- which was right after I got done punching back the economist inside me -- that she was already dating someone else. So off I took myself to my blog once again, to whine about all this and wait for the next girl to fall in love with me.
See, there are certain drawbacks to being a senior and single simultaneously, and this is one of them. In an ideal world, or maybe in some other culture, I wouldn't be afraid of dying alone or not having kids. I think this has to do with being Turkish, or maybe it's just that I'm taking those American sitcoms too seriously. All I know is that I'm supposed to reproduce at some point in my life, which according to my parents had better be soon, because "Mommy would just love to have grandchildren." But for me, that sounds impossible in the foreseeable future - or some other phrase that corresponds to "Are you nuts?" However, and I hope this doesn't lead to any further expectations among the members of my inner circle, I might think of naming my next two papers after my parents, you know, as a token of my gratitude for all those years of parenting.
Once you're fixated on having those three letters following your name around wherever you go -- as in the case of Cüneyt Yılmaz, PhD -- there's no time to devote to a significant other, a soulmate or a person to whom you refer with expressions like "Ohmigod! We are soo meant to be together." The only kind of affair I'm willing to partake in is one with economics. My life doesn't have the kind of gap that can only be filled by a truly unique kind of organism, i.e., a woman -- so unique that pursuit of it poses the biggest threat to one of the basic assumptions in microeconomics: people are rational. Because who would suggest that having a person in the aforementioned status -- girlfriend -- would help one get a PhD? On the contrary, combining the two would create a workload that contradicts the linear understanding of time.
Even now, as I write this, I've got a huge backlog of stuff to finish. There's a 10-page essay that needs to be finished by the time you read this, an even longer one that's due soon, a presentation about which I have no clue…to name just a few things. Oh, and there are also a couple of exams that one's obliged to take if one wants to do a master's in Turkey, and TOEFL or IELTS to prove that one can communicate in English. Even when I'm done with all that, there's my statement of purpose, an essay that economics departments around the world are dying to see. And finally, I have to ask -- or beg, in some cases -- at least three professors to write letters of reference for me, in which they will confess their admiration and envy for my talents as an undergraduate. So thank you, I think I'll pass on the girlfriend thing, at least for a while.
I can imagine you reading this with your own girlfriend, as you sit at some secluded spot on campus, caressing her hair, as her head rests lovingly on your chest. She says once again how funny I am. You tell her that in fact I'm not funny and you're sick of my gibberish. She objects to what you say in a worryingly determined manner. Your voice gets louder. So does hers. And, there you have it: a fight over me. If that's the case, she's got my email address up there. She shouldn't worry -- I'm not that moody, cold-blooded blogger anymore.