Wishing the UCL student community a Happy Valentine’s Day!

Whether you're celebrating Valentine's Day, Galentine's Day (with your female friends) or Palentine's Day (with all your pals) – or nothing at all – you'll find something for everyone in UCL Student Storyteller Zoe Dahse's Valentine's reflections.

Valentine’s Day – it doesn’t really elicit a lot of emotions when I ask my friends what they think about it. It tends to be something seen in shops in the form of chocolates, flowers, and teddy bears. My dad used to come home from work with flowers from the gas station, price tag still visible, to give my mother. Perhaps a kind of misguided act of love, but an act of love regardless. Love comes in many forms, and (let’s not sugarcoat it) also goes, as we change and grow and move on. 

February itself can be a cold, wet and frankly miserable month, but for me these rough winter months are always a valuable lesson that self-love should be applicable at all times, I think.  

I recently quit a job, which was an act of self-love – it was too much for me and I wasn’t enjoying it, and it was good to recognise this (instead I get to do this job, which I love!). 

My best friend, who’s a final-year Spanish and Comparative Literature student at UCL, and I drew up a list of goals for 2025 (some of them achievable, many others downright delusional). 

“I never see you enough! Why don’t we do this more often?” I exclaim to her, and we make plans to meet more frequently. 

We move on to talk about love and complicated exes, and we both agree that “being single is… probably better….” 

“But! I still like him,” I concede. 

Welcome to the joys and tribulations of modern love. Friendships, and relationships, aren’t always easy to navigate. 

Love comes in many forms, and (let’s not sugarcoat it) also goes, as we change and grow and move on. 
“

I'm hanging out with my friend Harriet, who graduated from UCL last year in History of Art, drawing portraits of each other (she’s so good at drawing me in a really uncanny way that I get frustrated she doesn’t pursue this further) at her flat. She tells me, “You can't take it seriously” – “it” being one other person as a romantic partner. And this is good advice for me, because I have the tendency to do so frequently and quickly become anxious over things I don’t need to be anxious about. 

“You know you’re gorgeous, right?” she tells me, as I leave, before kissing me on the forehead. And I smile and throw the compliment right back at her. 

My view now is that it would be stupid to put all your love in one person: it’s best to spread it across many people in your life, and to be balanced. This view will probably change over the years as I grow and experience more, but for now, I get pure joy from a friend texting me to meet after I suggested a café we can go to.  

One of the writers for my student newspaper Pi Media, Ciara O’Dwyer, recently wrote a fantastic piece titled “A Case for Celebrating Platonic Love this V-Day.” She discusses “all-consuming forms of love” in comparison to balanced and healthier forms, such as good and stable friendships and I encourage everyone to have a read.

My close friend Sophie, a final-year Neuroscience student at UCL, tells me, “I’m not in a relationship, and this awful term Galentine’s keeps on cropping up in commercial places… but I quite like it”. I laugh at this and fondly remember forcing my friends at school to go to Pizza Express and celebrate Galentine’s Day together. We sat around tables of couples and gossiped about the current couples in our year group (what else were a group of 15-year-olds supposed to do?), as we ate heart-shaped dough balls. 

“I literally have never and will never like this idea of a sole day for love – I try to love my friends and family every day,” my friend Lotta, an MSc Climate Change student at UCL, says. I agree with her, love should be universal, but I also want to try something new this year. 

I literally have never and will never like this idea of a sole day for love – I try to love my friends and family every day.“

Honestly, as it happens sometimes, I try to call some friends to meet up, and it just doesn’t work out – they’re busy and stressing out about their dissertations (which I should also be doing). And when this happens it’s great to take charge and have a good time alone, so… I go on a date with myself (yes, I’m borrowing social media influencer lingo), cringe as it sounds. But in all honesty, it’s been a long time since I spent time with myself, and just myself. I ignore texts and emails asking me to do things – that can wait. 

I leave my halls off Tottenham Court Road and head towards Oxford Street. Racing down, I let myself get caught up in a flurry of Londoners enjoying their after-work hours. On the bus (which I prefer to take these days just as a chance to see London above ground, and because it’s cheaper), I marvel at night-time Oxford Street and Notting Hill, while also catching up on some admin and emails.

I’m on my way to a Leiths Cookery School Open Day, something I’ve rescheduled on and off throughout my UCL career. But it's always been a bucket list thing for me so I attend and even get to explore a new part of London (while trying to figure out how on earth I will ever be able to pay the £33k fee for it one day). Nevertheless, it’s a dream of mine, and an avenue I want to explore. The highlight of the evening is that I get to attend a free taster course in a few weeks’ time, where I’ll be able to watch a demo and then even have a go at cooking. I leave feeling happy at the prospect of doing something I enjoy very soon. 

I listen to good music on the bus home (Mumford & Sons’ new song ‘Rushmere’ maybe five times on repeat), and then I spontaneously enter House of CB, a dress shop which I had passed earlier. And in their shopfront I had seen a beautiful Marilyn-Monroe style red dress.

“Can I try it on?” I ask the shop attendant. 

“You’ve got 15 minutes until the store closes, but yes”. 

I try it on and love the colour and fit, but since I don’t need it I don’t buy it. But look how gorgeous it is! A very successful case of window shopping. At home I order myself a lip balm I’ve been wanting to buy for a long time that will tint my lips a cherry red (in keeping with the traditional colours of Valentine’s Day).  

“This year has been pivotal for me to realise the value of true friends –– people with whom you can be a completely honest version of yourself.

I then text my situationship (a terrible 21st-century dilemma) for a while, who I like a lot regardless, and he makes me smile. Listening to G-Eazy’s ‘Tumblr Girls’ on repeat in my room, I feel happy and confident while I plan the week ahead. I finish the evening by reading Eat, Pray, Love, a genuinely good illustration of the joys and failures of romantic love, and the ways in which love is all-encompassing in daily life, not just through one partner. 

This year has been pivotal for me to realise the value of true friends –– people with whom you can be a completely honest version of yourself. And how important it is to let them know how much you value them.  

Whichever way you’re celebrating Valentine’s Day this year, I hope it’s full of love for those you choose to keep and cherish in your life. I’ll be spending mine with a friend, laughing and giggling and watching a terribly unrealistic romantic movie. Love, after all, is not like the movies – it’s a wonderfully real, multi-faceted thing, and comes in many shapes and forms.

I’ve always wondered what happens after the happy ending. Although the protagonists have realised that they love each other then, in that moment, things can always change. Feelings change, life changes… so catch the moment while you can and enjoy it.  

 

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