Spotting a HVM: What Did Priscilla Chan See in Mark Zuckerberg?!

 @Brenda55 I went to a white frat party once with a group of white girls. It was perfectly fine. They held the party in the backyard of the frat house and there were HUNDREDS of people there. We talked to some guys, had one or two drinks, then left.  While no love connections were made by any of us, it was better that I went instead of sitting in my dorm or apartment moaning about not meeting anybody on a Friday night. I don’t see what’s so scary about non-black frat parties. Seriously, just be smart, don’t stick around if you see you’re the only woman in the house and it’s getting later and again, in most cases, the parties end up spilling outside anyway because there are TONS of people there.

 @Soul_Incites Thank you–that means a lot. It really, really does.

 @SynaiAshford Quite a long time ago (1960s), when I ‘rushed’ for fraternity membership at a mountain-state university, I was judged a ‘closet case’ (the fraternity-system’s DBR status) – taken aside & ‘interviewed’ by a senior member, so that my very presence wouldn’t contaminate the potential pool of pledges.  Even my father’s fraternity wouldn’t have me.
Since the social life at that university revolved around the fraternity-sorority system, I did not do well – flunked out 3 semester later, in fact.
So, by turns, I learned to date-and-relate far out from the university life and systems … which included meeting the Foreign Students, the ‘townie’ folks and the pre-nerds and pre-geeks.
All this left me oriented to academics and achieving university rank, ultimately resulting in my doctoral degree, my ability to think and do for myself, and to find companionship well outside the conventional box.
Come to think of it, marrying Brenda55 was about as far out of the ‘becky-white-box’ as possible.

 @SynaiAshford
 I didn’t meet anyone I’d want to marry in college, but I met a couple of guys who wanted to marry me.  In those days I was hell-bent on being the first woman of color to head a Fortune 500 company–marriage was not on my priority list.  I found my late husband  the old-fashioned way: we were both at a cocktail mixer for professionals and he asked to host to introduce us.  He pursued me from Vegas to San Francisco.
 
My daughter met her prince in grad school.  She was doing a year of study at a University in the same city in which he was attending law school.  They married the day after he graduated (she finished college the year before.)  He was not drop-dead gorgeous, but he clearly loved my child.  She was smart enough to see his potential.  Needless to say, they are married 13 years now and both doing very well professionally and personally.
 
We women have to admit that we are oftentimes attracted to superficial and venal  things in men, and that has never served us well.  Looking for a solid, loving, ambitious man with character and integrity will almost always be a better pursuit than chasing smooth-talking pretty boys who look hot on the dance floor.  As I told my daughter when she was going away to college, “the qualities that constitute a fun date are not necessarily the same qualities that make for a good husband.”