Dear Lomita,

Week seven blues have got a hold on me, but in a different way than you might think; while the increased workload has got a lot of my classmates down, it means I’ve stayed up every night with a girl down the hall discussing the intricacies of our readings. As time has gone on we have only spent more time together. Last week we decided to meet for coffee, but she brought her readings with her. I’ve started to really develop feelings for her outside the realm of our work, but I think she’s having a hard time reading between the lines. What should I do?

-SLEEPLESS

Dear SLEEPLESS,

Initially, this situation seemed pretty simple and common to me. You have a crush on a girl, and don’t know if she likes you back. But something seemed off. And then I realized: you two have never hooked up! Almost always these days people either hook up and then develop feelings for each other, or they have feelings for each other so they hook up, and then maybe they date each other. But it seems like you’re looking to skip the hooking up and jump straight into dating, which seems romantic and lovely to me. So how should you go about doing that? I’m sure the failed coffee date wasn’t good for your ego, but I think you owe it to yourself to try again. If you two had been friends for a long time, I would maybe caution you against outright revealing your feelings, because it could make your valuable friendship a little uncomfortable. But, it seems like you guys have only recently gotten to know each other as a result of sharing a class, and therefore I would urge to go for it — ask this dang girl out on a date! If it ends up making things awkward, so what?

In three weeks, the class you share will be over, and after that you’ll only see her when you bump into each other in the halls. Sleepless, I have faith that you can handle that potential situation with aplomb. Because the coffee invite clearly wasn’t explicit enough, I would ask her out to dinner. She will definitely get the message. If she says yes, great! If she says no, it’s a bummer, but you can be very proud of putting yourself out there like that, because it definitely takes courage.

All the best,

Get LO(mita)

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