Note – the content in this post is consistent with a PG-13 rating.  Thanks.

I’ve been teaching “Human Sexuality and the Family” for four years and I still find myself surprised about what seems to surprise my students.

Thinking back to my predisposed assumptions regarding what students would, or would not, think through out loud in the classroom now seems ridiculous to me.

For some reason, I honestly believed college students were more sexually savvy than what I now know them to be.  Perhaps this was because of the overt and raucous behavior I would occasionally witness among groups hanging out together on campus, cracking jokes and making continuous, “That’s what she said” interjections.

Perhaps, my misconceptions were because of insecurities on my own part.  It could be that I was intimidated by their attempts to be intimidating…attempts to set up defenses so strongly reinforced that my own fears would keep me at bay from helping them learn what they were afraid to discover.

This group behavior I mentioned, however, tended toward simply masking the struggles and insecurities of thousands of young academics finding their way to adulthood – the majority of whom have little ease or comfort when it comes to really processing their own learning about human sexuality.

I thought it might be helpful to pass along some of the most tangential questions students tend to dwell on over and over.  Understanding what students in their early 20s think about, find curious to discover, or debate about in the classroom could be helpful for our society to continue a dialogue that students seem willing to have.  Therefore, I’ve prepared a few points drawn only from my single perspective in one classroom about who, what, and how sexuality is deconstructed and then reconstructed throughout a semester.

Students are highly curious about the “next life stage” and what that might mean for them and an intimate partner.

The idea of being in a committed relationship and what that might mean sexually is a curious thing for students.  They wonder how they will negotiate long-term birth control decisions.  They wonder what is fair and not fair about Continue reading University FAQs About the World of S-E-X →