the trials of a single girl in her 30s

When I first told my mother I was going to graduate school, she was delighted. She has for years been telling me how much she regrets not getting a higher degree (she was one year into a PhD in biology when my dad got a tenured job and they moved 1,000 miles away so he could take it; she never got back to that degree she'd wanted and has felt hindered by not having it throughout her career). But pretty quickly, she realized there was another cause for rejoicing. She is an avid reader of the New York Times wedding page, and just as she has observed in its listings that many people are now getting married in their late 20s and 30s (hope for me yet, she says, though really she doesn't want me to have a husband so much as give her grandbabies who live in this country), so too has she noted that most of them meet in school. At Stanford, she decided, I would find my husband.

As it turns out, I am in a master's program that is 6/7 female, in a department with about the same percentage, so I'm not finding too many opportunities to meet my future hubby. When I do meet men who seem attractive, smart, and available, they tend to have one major deficiency: a significant number fewer years of life than me. Now given the treatise I once wrote on why younger men shouldn't write off older women, you probably know I'm open to dating younger men. My brother, after all, is four years the junior of his wife, and they have a terrific relationship—just the kind I'd like to find. So I'm as open as open can be. But how much younger is too young?

The first two guys I met on campus who seemed to take an interest proved to be, each, about 22. In both cases, they looked it, so I had to finally step away from the conversation because, really, what is the point? Last week I met one who seemed plenty mature and plenty appealing—but he proved to be just 24. Is seven years too much younger for dating? I couldn't tell he was that much younger—he didn't look it, and he didn't seem it. Does that make it OK? The question is rhetorical, really, because I doubt he would want to date someone so much older—for the self-same reason I identified in the PSA mentioned above. But given that my pickings seem to be mainly in the realm of those younger than me, I'm trying to figure out where to draw the line—or if I have to. It feels wrong, somehow, to be attracted to someone seven or ten years younger than me, but if I am, I am, right? Perhaps I've reached an age at which age matters less. What do you vote for, my dear readers—shall I become the next Mrs. Robinson??