I DESIGNED my ideal boyfriend in a dorm room voodoo ceremony orchestrated by my roommate. Such spiritualism was out of character for her practical nature but fit perfectly with her ego: she would believe that the forces of the universe were taking orders directly from her.

I wasn’t eager to encourage her delusions of grandeur, but I was frustrated enough with my lack of success in romance to give her a chance. So I played along, closing my eyes and calling out my specifications, smiling patiently while she conversed with the higher powers that apparently functioned like a mystical Match.com, and promising to wait the prescribed time (“six to eight weeks, at most”) before calling her out as a fraud.

Now that my order was placed, I wasn’t supposed to go looking for him. I had to have faith that he’d be delivered to me when the time was right. In truth, I was ready to let someone else (or something else) take over. All the usual methods of finding love on campus — dancing with strangers at frat parties, flirting during class, and venting my frustrations online to the Anonymous Confession Board (my school’s angst-ridden, gossip-laden underbelly) — had failed to get me what I wanted.

My specifications were that he be tall, scruffy and a bit older than me. I preferred that he major in math or the sciences to offset my artistic nature, and that he like to watch TV with me at night. I know that vague characteristics like height and age do not true love make, but I was warned that being too specific on a campus of only 2,900 undergrads was likely to backfire. My roommate’s last client had requested a boy who always wore scarves. Two years later, he had yet to appear.