Abandon your cliché New Year’s resolution.

Instead of trying to lose weight or get better grades, college students should consider taking up a more challenging resolution: to have a better sex life.

“But I already hookup with a lot of people,” says the sexually active, single college student. “How can my sex life be better?”

Ask yourself: in 2014, just how many mediocre hookups did you have? How many “meh” moments were there? Probably more than a few.

In 2015, don’t take bad sex lying down.

Quality vs. quantity is often thrown around when it comes to hookups. But having a better sex life isn’t a matter of hooking up with more people, and it is not a matter of hooking up with less people. It’s a matter of knowing what you want and having a consensual hookup with someone who respects you and whom you respect.

When it comes to hookups, respecting someone means caring about his or her sexual experience just as much as you care about your own. It means not being selfish.

According to a July 8 Cosmopolitan.com article, 20–30 percent of women don’t orgasm from intercourse, versus an approximate 75 percent of men who climax every single time. Another article on Cosmopolitan.com reported that women were half as likely to orgasm during casual sex versus sex with someone they’re in a serious relationship with. It seems like the odds are against women when it comes to enjoying casual sex, but they don’t have to be.

In a time when headlines denounce the college hookup culture and think-piece articles lament the death of the first date, it is easy to equate respect with someone taking you out on a date. After all, when someone invests time getting to know you, there’s usually some belief that things will eventually lead to sex. And when you’re in a relationship, it’s sort of an expectation that partners care about each other’s sexual experience.

But respect, especially when it comes to hookups, shouldn’t come from how much time is invested in someone. Respect between sexual partners shouldn’t have to be earned through dates or relationships. It’s OK to have casual sex with someone you barely know, but it is not OK to treat that person simply as a way to get off. A significant other of two years deserves just as much respect as a one-night stand.

It’s hard for mutual respect to happen without communication, though. I know, it sounds really cliché to say, “You have to tell them what you want.” But having a conversation about what you want with the person you’re hooking up with could save you 20 minutes of mediocrity.

For example, let’s say you hook up with a really hot guy or girl but foreplay seems to be a foreign concept to that person. Instead of hoping he or she will take the hint and be a little less selfish next time, say something. It might seem awkward to ask, “So, can we actually do foreplay?” to someone you’re not dating, but you’ve got nothing to lose by trying to improve your hookup experience.

In order to tell the person you’re with what you want, you also have to know what you like. For both guys and girls, it’s difficult to know what you like if you never have sober sex. Drunk sex is a seemingly inevitable part of college that, although fun, isn’t where your “best sex ever” usually comes from. If you currently have more drunk than sober sex, make it part of your resolution to even it out.

Everyone says college is a time to find yourself and explore what you want to do for the rest of your life. Usually they’re referring to career goals, but it should also refer to sex. You don’t graduate college and automatically become a sex god. It takes practice asking for what you want and not settling for something mediocre. This should be the year that you start making every hookup your best one — it’s more fun than counting calories, anyway.

Kate Beckman is a sophomore magazine journalism major. Her column appears every week in Pulp. You can reach her at kebeckma@syr.edu or follow her on Twitter at @Kate_Beckman.

Published on January 14, 2015 at 12:01 am