First comes graduation, then comes marraige?

They’re everywhere.

They’re in front of me in class, nearly punching me in the face during kickboxing and polluting Facebook profile pictures everywhere.

They’re mimed on Beyonce’s left hand in the “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)” music video. They’re sparkly and smug, glaring at me with a half-carat smirk.
They’re engagement rings.

As graduation nears, I see more and more peers succumbing to an all-too-grown-up future: marriage. When I see another friend has changed her relationship status on Facebook, I dread clicking further to find out that we’ve lost another one.

We’re still children – 21-, 22- and 23-year-olds without jobs, health insurance, a nest egg and for the most part any clue on how to begin to survive outside the college bubble.

I have a lot of decisions I need to make regarding my immediate future – jobs, law school, travels – decisions that can’t be made based off anyone but myself.

This is a time to be selfish, not a time to vow your life away to someone else.

I’ve changed a lot in the past four years of college, and I imagine that four years from now I’ll be unrecognizable to my present self. So if you’ve met the person you know you’re going to end up with, why not just enjoy each other for a few more years instead of jumping to the next big step?

They say it’s a Midwest thing, but I think it’s a sex thing.

The federal government is funding a $5 million media campaign nationwide to convince 18- to 30-year-olds to get married, due to a decline from 1986’s 10 out of 1000 newly married folks to 2008’s 7.1.

I imagine a lot of the blame for this young marriage epidemic is that people feel pressure from their relatives, faith and tradition to “put a ring on it” to cohabitate. I get this, but there are a lot of downsides to getting married so young.

Money is a prominent issue, including the thousands of dollars that a non-tacky wedding costs.

General stability is also a concern – not knowing where the next few years of your life are going is terrifying and potentially detrimental to a relationship.

I’m not anti-marriage. One of my closest friends is preparing for her October wedding, and I couldn’t be happier for her – but she knows my stance on marrying young.

My parents married at 23 and swear it was all work and no play until about 20 years later.

More severely, I know a 20-year-old girl who was married and divorced during her first two years of college.

Marriage doesn’t magically fix everything.

I’m not going to pretend that every now and then I don’t wish I could stop playing the game and know who I’m going to be with, but I have confidence that I will find love and a husband by 28 (my scary age).

When I marry, I want to know it’s forever. And I can’t know it’s forever unless I’ve got a game plan for life after May.