Boy meets girl. Boy falls for girl. Boy and girl date. Boy is older than girl. Everyone chirps boy. Everyone heckles girl.

At Edina High School, this sort of thing happens all the time. But why? After all, age and grade are just numbers. We aren’t dealing with Hugh Hefner and his barely-legal girlfriends, just teenagers whose ages usually only differ by a dozen or so months.

How exactly do people go about dating someone who isn’t in their grade? One of the concerns of students is coming off a little too strong. “Initially I didn’t want to come off as too creepy” said senior Jack Swift, who is currently dating sophomore Sophie Edgar. On the other hand, the younger person in the relationship might worry about coming across as too cocky for going after an older guy or girl.

So what complicates things? According to junior Matt Nelson, “There are [twice as many] people watching you” when you’re dating someone outside of your grade. Another downside for Matt is that “[girlfriend Kelly McGarvey] graduates this year.” Swift added that “People sort of look down on the relationship at first or say it’s really weird. Sometimes it’s hard to hang out in groups because our friends don’t really know each other.”
However, not knowing people outside of your grade isn’t necessarily a bad thing, the boys added. “You get to meet a whole new group of people you never would’ve known, which is awesome,” said Swift. For Nelson, dating a senior is nice because “it’s like getting to experience senior year early.”

So are intergrade relationships really that big of a deal? Senior Billy Nash said, “Definite positives [of an intergrade relationship] would be getting to meet new friends, getting in to all different events, and getting to date [junior Christine Harvey] is a big one!” In the end, it seems that you should be dating someone that you genuinely like. Yes, there might be awkwardness, attention, stereotypes, and heckling from friends, but doesn’t this come with all relationships?

Swift added, “[My friends] still like to poke fun but it’s all good. To be honest it’s just like any other relationship”.