With the exception of handing in 2 papers, I am done for the year. This is my last post from Hillsdale until the fall. Not sure how well my Spanish final went, but I think I'll be able to keep my B. I hope so anyway. *crosses fingers and prays*

So yeah, no idea what the semester holds for me in terms of grades. I know I'm not getting my scholarship back. My Rhetoric grade is resting on my prof's mercy and grace. Unknown how I'm doing in American Lit either. A in piano, A in the CCA. So there's 2 credits of As. American Heritage is also unknown, but I'm predicting and hoping for a B. It's never as bad as I think it will be, and yet I still lose sleep.

Need to pack. I leave to drive Mitch to the airport at 2:30 and then head for HOME!

Here is my article for the Forum. The staff edited it but I'm too lazy to fix the original.
“Marriage is the end of everything,” proclaims 20-year-old Amanda. 20-year-old Carly couldn’t agree more: “Men are dogs. I couldn’t imagine living with one.” 19-year-old Katherine muses: “I think I’ll start a sect of Protestant nuns.”

What do these three girls have in common? First, they’re all friends of mine. Second, for purposes of this article I haven’t used their real names. Finally, they all echo a common sentiment among young American women today: They don’t want to get married. Ever.

Across the nation more and more women are remaining single. Not because they can’t find an eligible man, but because they don’t want to find an eligible man. These women view marriage as worthless at best and evil at worst.

Why this shift in attitudes towards marriage? If I had grown up in my favorite period of history, the 1940s, chances are at 20 years old I’d already have married my high school sweetheart (I might have even had a high school sweetheart) and either already have a baby or have one on the way. I wouldn’t be in college with my parents paying for the air that I breathe. I’d be a responsible, mature woman (one would hope).

But since I grew up in the 1990s, at 20 I am single and working on a college degree. I probably won’t be married for a few years yet, and maybe not be a mom for the next decade. If I choose not to marry, I can still support myself. What changed? Many things.

When the feminist movement came along in the 1960s, women became more independent. Within 20 years women went from getting married out of high school and spending the next decade having and raising babies to attending college and having careers. Today, women can even bear children without men. Suddenly we can support ourselves entirely—without husbands. We no longer need men.

The feminist movement also gave rise to the anti-male attitude. American society spends a good deal of time criticizing and demoralizing men. Our sitcoms especially show the husband as clueless and fumbling while the wife is wise and discerning and always cleaning up his mistakes. In school our boys are taught that their natural male behavior is morally repugnant. If a young man holds a door open for a young lady, she may launch into a “chivalry is dead” rant. Yet if he treats her like his male friends, she may just as easily tell him what a pig he is. Men only have to hear that they’re dopes and good-for-nothings a few times to start believing it. So what do they do? Act like dopes and good-for-nothings. We’ve all laughed at Ray Romano a few times, but I think most of my female counterparts will agree we wouldn’t want to marry someone like him.

A third reason is the increasing selfishness of American culture. We live in a world where the sun rises on our left shoulder and sets on our right. An article on MSN a few weeks ago (http://msn.match.com/msn/article.aspx?articleid=6320) detailed the benefits of being single: You have more money and can spend it how you want, you can travel where you want, you can make your own decisions and not be accountable to anyone. All self-centered motives. Marriage requires compromising and sacrificing our own needs for those of our husbands or wives. A single woman can do what she wants, when she wants, and she lives in a society that promotes such a lifestyle. Why should she give that up for marriage?

While many people claim there’s no problem with this trend, I say there is. I believe the growing school of thought that marriage is a loathsome burden rather than God’s plan for uniting male and female indicates a problem with American culture.

First, marriage has a way of forcing us to grow up and mature. I have seen this in my high school friends who have taken the long walk and heard tales of it from adults who have been married for decades. When you are married, you have to take your spouse’s needs and desires into consideration when making decisions. You can’t just decide to go get your law degree or take that promotion that will have you move across the country. Learning to consider the needs of others is a valuable life skill, and the mark of a mature Christian. Being married helps to hone it.

Marriage also teaches conflict resolution. If you have a spat with a coworker, you can go to your separate cubicles until you’re ready to talk again. If you disagree with a friend on the phone, you can just hang up on her. Have an argument with your significant other and you can go back to your own apartments until the next day. But if you have a fight with your spouse, there’s no escaping. Women especially like to mope around and pretend nothing’s wrong when we’re really plotting the offending party’s tragic accidental death. But in marriage, we can’t do that. We have to learn to fight fair.

Finally, marriage was created for the purpose of providing a stable environment for children. It’s not all about us. Children need two parents who love each other and love their child for a stable home. A right marriage fosters this environment.

I’m not saying women should stop going to college. Nor am I saying that women should leave the workforce and bear children every couple of years from the ages of 20 to 40. I’m not saying that it’s necessarily a bad thing to be single—God has a different plan for each of us. What I am saying is today’s young woman might consider not writing off marriage so quickly. Marriage is God’s ordained institution for bringing male and female together. Through it we grow, mature, and learn. And really, isn’t that what the Christian life is all about?