DENNIS & HYEJIN JUNE 2015

The first time we met was the Brown-Bassett dorm freshman small group for Duke InterVarsity.  My first impression of Dennis was that he was cute but we didn’t spend much time together freshman year because I had other interests, such as ordering chow fun from Grace’s cafe and watching movies with my blockmates.

 

Fast-forward to sophomore year.  Dennis and I were on a retreat planning committee and started hanging out due to a combination of g-chat, google docs, and “planning meetings.” (Typical us.) (Wait… It wasn’t just the 2 of us. Michelle Kwak was there!)

 

Second semester, somehow Dennis and I decided to white tent together with a couple of our friends. I don’t even like basketball (and I wasn’t even going to the game → Bronx Trip 2010).  We (un)intentionally scheduled back-to-back tent shifts to spend afternoons together.  We also had “study” dates (I actually studied but I honestly don’t know what she did for most of that time) in the library where we would share a medium pizza from The Loop (ooooh barbeque chicken) while Dennis did problem sets (life of an engineer) and Hyejin wrote memos and read (and re-read) her psychology textbooks.  At the end of the night, Dennis would walk me to my room while carrying my textbooks.  This “courtship” period lasted a few months. Studying. Eating. Walking to my room. My grades were excellent this semester, because I spent more time in the library than I ever had before.

Anyways, we became “official” on March 20, 2010.  It happened in the library, of course.  We were having another “planning” meeting in the Perkins Cafe. Or at least I thought it was a planning meeting.  I brought an agenda with 3 bullet points (typical). I went through each of the bullet points and carefully laid out my master plan for the coming year (I have no idea what she said).  After I finished, I turned to Dennis and said, “Okay, your turn. What did you want to talk about?” He paused for a while. Finally, he said something like, “I wanted to say that I’ve really enjoyed getting to know you these past few months…..” It ended with something vague, like, would you be interested in starting a relationship with me or something (apparently this is how carefully thought-out words turn out to be perceived). I was elated. So much, in fact, that in the spur of the moment, I called my mom and made Dennis speak to her right then and there (yes, that last part of a weird turn of events).