The ultimate ask. 7 years of school-dance-dating have led up to this moment. In some ways, it’s easier to remember the skills you’ve learned. But this is a whole different level. Below are the steps outlining your guide to get through prom season, so study them. It’s not like you’re going to bother studying for finals.

1. The search should start on social media. And if your class love story hasn’t begun organically, it’s only because you haven’t gone on Instagram. You can revisit past group partners and see if they’re single, then do a deep dive into their recent adventures. We’re looking for somebody with hobbies, someone who has bragging potential. 
2. When you’re at the dinner table there is going to be plenty of anecdote time. College on the horizon, or not, people will be talking about the future. Scary. You want to look for somebody who can hold a conversation. And more importantly, talk about all of the cool stuff they’re doing over the summer. 
3. Networking. You don’t want to limit yourself in the beginning. It’s crucial to have a web of about 5 potential students because if you’re looking so are they. Everybody is putting on their sparkliest, eyelash-batting personality trying to make themselves seem unforgettable. But along the way, it’ll become clear that they aren’t, and some potential picks will fall off your radar. It’s only natural.
4. Money honey. Prom tickets are notoriously expensive, but senior pockets tend to be lint filled. And while it’s not holy matrimony, the phrase ‘marrying up’ summarizes our intent. You’re looking to couple with someone who can pay for your ticket and theirs. When asking about their job history make sure they’re currently employed. But subtly is key. No one wants to seem shallow. 
5. Height matters. Everyone wants to take pictures with someone who is of proportional height. Not falling out of the frame. If it can’t be helped and they’re taller than you, make them come barefoot. And if you’re having the opposite problem, step stools are on sale.

So don’t settle. You can cherish the people you’ve known in high school, sign their yearbook. But prom is where it gets serious. If your pick has made it this far, they are checking off all these boxes. There’s only one prom. Ever. And in the age of internet interaction, people will only remember the pictures.

Comedy, as Aristotle defines it, is a story of the rise in fortune of a sympathetic central character. The movie How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003), stars Kate Hudson as Andie Anderson, a writer for a female targeted magazine called Composure. After Andie’s friend experiences another breakup due to her over involved and over emotional behavior with men, Andie decides to write an article called “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” where she will meet a man and do everything “wrong” to try and get him to break up with her as quickly as possible to prove what her friend is doing wrong. 

Ben Barry is an advertising executive who is bored with his usual advertisements revolving around beer and sports. His new goal is to land a job with a prestigious diamond company. Ben’s boss questions whether Ben has the intimate knowledge of the “romance” it takes to make diamond advertisements because he is a known womanizer. Ben claims that he can get any woman to fall in love with him, so his boss gives him a 10 day time period to get a woman to fall in love with him before a company party. Ben’s two work rivals who also want the diamond contract point him towards Andie as the girl he should date because they have connections to Composure and know about the article she is writing. 

Both of them try to complete their quests with Andie doing everything she can to make Ben leave her: moving her stuff into his apartment, making a scrapbook of their future children, getting him punched at a movie theater for her talking during the movie, asking him to get her a soda during the final shot of a Knicks game, and many other overexaggerated mistakes she believes girls make when dating men. Because of his project, Ben sticks through everything and only breaks up with Andie after they get in a huge fight during Ben’s poker night. However, his friends convince them to go to couples therapy and they end up taking a weekend trip to Ben’s family’s home in Staten Island where the two fall in love. They both end up finding out about each other’s schemes, and after they argue and break up again, they ultimately come back together because of the endearing article Andie writes about her experience. 

This movie has all the hallmarks of a typical romantic comedy and Andie and Ben are both sympathetic characters in their own ways. Andie’s goal is to help her friend and she ends up falling in love and getting the best writing material she could have asked for. Ben starts off as a somewhat unredeeming character just trying to take advantage of Andie, but eventually we see how much he cares about his family, friends, and his career. They had both been unlucky in love in the past and then they met each other, fulfilling the “rise” in Aristotle’s comedy. 

This movie helps to enhance the absurdities of human nature and the combination of love and hate someone can have for a person. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days also addresses a lot of relationship and feminist topics and brings to light a lot of issues. Andie and Ben’s  world has been set up as pretty much every other romantic comedy, except the story is turned on its head. The boy is chasing the girl, albeit for a bet, and doing anything he can to be patient and understanding with her. Though in an admittedly convoluted way, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days flips the script in order to create a really compelling love story where both sides have said and done bad things to each other, but the admiration each character has for the other is ultimately what brings them back together. 
Critics of comedies will always point to the lack of substance that watching comedies over more meaningful bodies of work has. I concede that principally watching comedies is not the answer, but discounting them completely isn’t either. While on the surface How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days appears incredibly shallow and pretty un-feminist by today’s standards, I would argue that love stories like this aren’t meant to represent the real world. Comedy, in many forms, is a way to escape our life’s struggles and anxieties. Comedy allows viewers to be present in a world where the stakes aren’t life or death, and where things usually work out in the end. Being able to enter into this predictable yet satisfying world again and again is an invaluable way to escape the pressures of society that other forms of media cannot achieve in the same way.