Should college students be encouraged to find a boyfriend or girlfriend?

   In China, most high school students are not allowed to have a boyfriend or girlfriend. However, when they start their college life, they have the freedom and the chance.

   Personally, I think campus love in college is allowed but shouldn’t be encouraged.

   Some freshmen itch for a boyfriend or girlfriend out of curiosity since they had to keep a decent distance from the opposite sex at high school. Without the daily supervision of parents and teachers, their impulse to enter his or her world bursts like the eruption of volcanoes. They may not indeed understand what love is and how to love someone they think they love. Their “love” is superficial and has a short life.

   Some students look for a boyfriend or girlfriend for the reason of nothing but company. They’re perhaps not ready to love someone. All they need is a love partner in name, who can talk to them when silence prevail in their life, or who can go shopping with them when they feel uneasy to walk alone on the street, or who offers to help them when they fall hard up. Some students look for a love partner simply because — as they put it — “campus love is in; none of my roommates are single.” Burdened by external or personal considerations, their “love” brings them little or no real happiness.

   Some have more than one boyfriend or girlfriend. To them, love means sex. It is undeniable that sex plays an irreplaceable role in life, but love deserves far more than that. Once the physiological desire grows in the name of love, love is distorted and attainted. No wonder such words as “bachelor mother” and “abortion” become increasingly hot on college campus nowadays. In a word, love for sex betrays love and may even give rise to social problems.

   Of course, I firmly believe in true love between some students. They should treasure it, because love gives them power to work harder and comfort to get over frustration. Love helps them visualize or illuminates their future. But do all college students truly understand the essence of love and the commitment to it? How many of them can keep a clear head when conflicts take place? And how many so-called couples are fully prepared to share weal and woe?

   To conclude, at high school, students strived for the opportunity to receive advanced education rather than for the purpose of finding a love partner. After they earned the opportunity, they should still concentrate on their courses. They’re allowed to keep a good relationship with the opposite sex, for they’ve already grown up, but they should not be encouraged to seek a love when true love doesn’t arrive, because love needs the test of time.