Students spend most of their time at work or on campus, so these places can seem like the most practical places to find a date or to start a relationship.

You’ll be able to see each other daily, spend breaks and lunches together, never have to walk to class alone and can carpool. It sounds great to me; it’s like a best friend with make-out advantages.

Also, you have someone to confide in with your daily frustrations. The irritation with that boss who pinches your last nerve, the one you envision yourself punching in the nose, or the professor who won’t accept your late paper because you were late by five minutes.

But what happens when that bubble explodes? When you realize he or she isn’t your perfect match and you call it quits?

Already on an emotional roller coaster you try to avoid them at any cost, but it seems you can’t get away. You know each other’s schedule, work in the same building, have the same classes, eat lunch at the same spots or have the same friends.

The list can go on and on. Dating someone in such close proximity can either be the best thing in the world or the worst.

There is also that feeling most women get; jealousy. It comes with the feeling of still wanting him. Even if we don’t want the man back, we still hate seeing him with someone else.

In past relationships I feel as if I spent a lot of time molding my ex’s, like putting a puzzle together with lost pieces. I found the pieces and helped them form, learn and grow into great men. Dealing with the dreadful cycle of the boy turning into the man and not being with them can make them look like the perfect prize.

Also knowing you are doomed to run into each other, some women feel the pressure to look good after the breakup. Not because they are looking for someone new, but to hint or rub in the face of the ex of what they lost.

We make sure to wear makeup, no hats and no sweat pants. This becomes a new everyday priority because we want their jaws to hit the floor, wishing they still had us in their lives. We want them to go home dreaming of us and wishing they could change the past.

But it never happens this way. Usually, both do their best to avoid each other until the one day you’re running late for class with no time to get ready and you run into each other.

Exchanging smiles and a quick hello, he’ll walk with the co-worker or future girlfriend of your nightmares, only wishing she would trip in her three-inch heels. This sometimes can lead to a game of making each other jealous.

I try to keep a civilized friendship with my ex’s but, it never seems to go as well as planned. Either I end up giving the relationship another try, only leaving me back four months later in a breakup, or being hurt by new stories of a future love interest.

My views seem to be more on the negative side of dating on campus or at work only because I’m currently going through it and I am experiencing these feelings as I write this column. My ex and I have both moved on and we try to keep a respectable friendship.

I still agree with dating in the workplace or at school. I think it can be a wonderful long-lasting relationship no matter the possible repercussions and awkward consequences if a breakup were to happen. You never know, that guy or girl you’ve said one word to sitting behind you or the date your friends keep trying to hook you up on or the person walking by you in the office could be person of your dreams.

Shauvon Torres can be reached at [email protected]