Romance. Oh great.

I can't think about anything now without thinking about Professor Burton's lecture on Romance and hopeless idealism in relationships. At BYU, a girl is very in danger of getting her hopes up. VERY in danger. We've been raised up in Young Women's with this idea that when we go to college, we get find our eternal companions and live happily ever after. Being a freshman, I've just gotten thrown into this world. People get swept up and engaged in three weeks, married in the next three, and having their first child nine or ten months later! Heck, even in my group, both of the guys are married! It's a very inane process to the outside world. As I've gotten more sucked into the idea of getting, well, swept away and falling madly in love, I remember Professor Burton's stories and think to myself, "Am I living a fantasy? Am I really getting worked up over something that doesn't exist?"

I'm pretty sure that's how Perdita's mind was working as Florizel was pronouncing his true, deep, heartfelt emotions to everybody that would listen to him. She seems like a really smart, sharp girl so far. On a plus side, at least she's older than Juliet, who was 13. 15-16 is a good, ripe age to get married, right? Of course, their ideals were different than ours. We assume that by age 16, girls in Shakespeare's time can make rational decisions and are no longer prone to being swept away by huge bouts of emotion. (They're usually swept away by other things. Water, in Ophelia's case.) Compared to Florizel, she is much more grounded in reality and less likely to simply give away herself on an impluse. I think she got it from her mother.