Love and relationships, Kean style
By Shelsie Ducheine
When the end of your high school career rolls around and college is on the horizon, it is not uncommon for many students to have overwhelming feelings about the upcoming semester. Parents make it their duty to notify their children of how important grades are. All the while, high school graduates can only think of how much fun it’ll be to finally be out on their own.
Campus life for a girl can be filled with heartbreak and leave many feeling confused about who they are. Mia Sapp and Kyleesha Wingfield-Hill, juniors at Kean University, know exactly how you girls feel. From that, however, they have been able to take lessons from their own struggles with relationships and flip them into a way that proves beneficial for them and can be beneficial for you. Their experiences and their advice are all narrated in a book entitled, “They Shoulda Told Us,” that will soon give college girls the insight they need on the many different love and life situations they will face once they leave the nest.
What first started off as a joke grew into a dire passion to teach their peers the things they wish they had known coming into college. Both Sapp and Hill recalled moments and relationships where they struggled and often forgot who they were as individuals. Their main objective is to empower girls who feel like they once did and prepare them for the trials and tribulations they may go through with men that their parents might not have warned them about. According to them, they have opened up an avenue to speak on the things that nobody else has. Instead of advice on time management and GPA’s, they want to give you the insights as to what happened behind those college dorm doors.
“Boys will speak sweet nothings in your ear and you’ll end up head over heels for him,” Sapp said. “Guard your heart, we’re not saying don’t love anyone. Be open, but still guard your heart.”
It’s almost inevitable to fall for the guy on the basketball team or the boy who lives across the hall from you who shows you some attention, but these girls make it clear that protecting your heart while still leaving it open for love, change and growth is vital. Understanding that the vast amount of people who will enter your life may not be there forever is key in conquering a confidence within yourself.
“Not everything is meant to be a forever thing,” Sapp said. “You’re going to have different guys, different people who come into your life that will teach you different lessons.”
Sapp and Hill explain and compare seasons to relationships. Just how the seasons change, relationships do as well. Sometimes they are due to natural causes and other times they are due to outside sources. Today the media has played a huge part on today’s youth and many feel that ideas on relationships have been altered because of it.
“When you look at the media, you get caught up in what relationships are like and forget that you have a relationship of your own,” Hill said. “Understand, you are walking in different shoes, living two different lifestyles. What occurs in one place may not occur in another.”
With the long laundry list of relationship and advice books on the shelves, the girls feel that theirs simply does not compare to any other. It provides a raw and different outlook on the difficulties and truths of college and how to maintain your reputation, as well as your sanity. Their intention is not to bash men, seeing that a lot of their learning and growth has come from them. What’s important to these girls is lending out a hand that can prepare young women for college life and to leave a legacy at Kean that people will always remember.
The book is expected to be released spring of 2015.