Robbie: What common themes or trends have you noticed about millennial love?

Daniel: I’d say the most common overall theme is people trying to figure out how to find love without ever having to be vulnerable. I often get the sense that college students are piecing together the little parts of their love lives that they need. There can be sort of a dividing line between an emotional relationship and a physical relationship. It changes from year to year based on how people are communicating and where they’re finding these connections.

Miya: There are many more forms of relationships now. Polyamory is a big theme in this contest, and I don’t really remember it showing up as much in the 2015 contest.

Daniel: It seems like many young people are getting rid of old constrictions, but they aren’t sure what shape the new thing should take. There’s lots of discussion about labels and terminology. In a previous contest, so many essays were asking the question, “What are we? Is this a relationship? Is it not a relationship? Does it have a rule? Does it not have a rule?” There’s always a lot about college that’s experimental, and that’s good! It leaves a lot of room for confusion, but it also leaves a lot of room for good essay writing because people are trying to figure out what things are.

Robbie: Sometimes I feel like I need a dictionary to distinguish between all of the different terms we have for things, whether it’s “talking” or “hooking up” or “ghosting.”

Daniel: I remember reading a bunch of essays, I can’t remember how long ago it was, where no one really agreed on what “hooking up” was. They sort of assumed they had this language in common, but when they were really being honest they were like, “Is this hooking up? If you’re just like kissing, is that hooking up?”

Miya: We’ve also seen a lot of people talking about the impact of technology. Clara Dollar, who was a finalist in the last competition, wrote about her Instagram personality and how she was always trying to live up to that version of herself. In 2015, Davis Webster wrote about never meeting up with someone on Tinder, but having this kind of virtual relationship. So at one end of the spectrum you have this no-strings-attached hookup culture, and then on the other side you have people connecting emotionally in a virtual world, but never meeting up.