Murmurs of prom are wafting through the spring air.
Of course, the first question on everyone’s mind is how to find an appropriate date. Your best bet, if you are lacking a significant other, is to ask that friend of yours who you have had a crush on. If you do not have anyone fitting that description, go with a friend. Do not ask someone you have barely even spoken to. It sounds like an awkward action to take, and, in fact, it is. Trying to break that awkward silence that lingers over dinner and through the rest of the evening is too much of a challenge. It’s best to go with someone you are pretty familiar with, who you know you will be comfortable hanging out with for an entire evening. A good idea is to coordinate dates with your friends. If you and your two best friends go with guys/girls who are also friends, you are much less likely to have awkwardness, and much more likely to have a good time.

In addition, if you go to prom with someone else as his/her date, do not bail out and run away from him/her. If you don’t want to spend time with someone, then don’t agree to go to prom with that person–it’s simple. A freshman friend of mine tagged along with a date only to get into prom, then ditched him once they were in the door, after going out to dinner and travelling to prom in a limo. The guy was deeply hurt. He had thought, "yay, I have a prom date," but then she ran away from him. Not cool.

Freshmen and sophomores, I won’t say you don’t belong at prom, but honestly, don’t go to prom just to go to prom. I say this from experience. Freshman year, I was like, "how awesome would it be if I went to prom," so I went. I can’t say the experience was as stellar as I thought it would be. I was leading my date on because he didn’t think I was just going to prom to go, he thought I was going to prom to go with him. In addition, since I was a mere freshman, I didn’t know many people there. It wasn’t as fun as it was two years later when I went with a date I liked and danced with my friends. I also discourage underclassmen from going on set-up dates just to get into prom (another thing I’ll admit to doing.) It was awkward being asked, "so, who’d you come with?" and explaining that I was there with so-and-so, but simply because he was my ticket in.

I would also advise against attending five million different proms. I know, you may think you’re extremely popular because you can attend proms at twenty different schools, but each successive prom becomes less and less to look forward to. Last year, I went to a grand total of two, and even then, it was less exciting to dress up two weeks after the first prom to go out to the other. I’ll admit that both proms were entertaining, but I would have been satisfied to just go to one. One of the things that makes prom so special is that it is the only nice formal dance that we have. If we had such a dance once a month, it would lose its flavor. It does the same thing to go to multiple proms.

If you dislike what I’m saying, disregard it. Obviously, there are no rules for who you should or should not go to prom with. The most important thing is to trust yourself. Know that you will (or should) be spending an evening with your date, so choose wisely.