“Oh, my gosh! He finally texted me. That only took two hours. I’ll wait three to text back.”

I couldn’t help but laugh as I listened to the girls sitting behind me at the Undergraduate Library (UGL). It was a conversation I’ve heard many times before. I, too, am guilty of saying the exact same thing.

Guy-girl texting is an art, and our cell phones are our paintbrushes. For girls like me, it is a meticulous task that requires lots of time and energy. The critical decisions we must make are endless: Ellipses or period? Uppercase or lowercase? “You” or “U”?

If we make a mistake, then we jeopardize a potential relationship. Texting matters.

Right?

The girls at the library seemed to think so. I, however, had a hunch that boys don’t care as much we think they do. Curious, I devised a plan: I would walk around the UGL and ask guys what they thought about texting. It’s a big deal to us, but what about them?

Barry Trilla, senior in Business, likes to keep things casual. “When I’m texting a girl, I’ll read over it once before I send it,” he said. “I want to be friendly and not come on too strong, but I don’t want to over-think a text.”

A quick re-read, and then Trilla hits send. A lot of girls are not like that at all. Instead, we will call our other friends for help: “Okay, so he asked what’s up. Should I say ‘nothing much’ or ‘not a lot’?”

Trilla isn’t the only guy who is laid-back about texting. When I asked Marshawn Lyles, senior in LAS, how much thought he puts into his texts, his response was simple: “Not much.”

The senior men in the UGL seemed to be confirming my suspicions. Ilir Sulejmani, junior in LAS, was the exception.

“I’m kind of cheesy,” he admitted, smiling. “I think out everything. The punctuation marks and the little smiley faces? Yep, those are planned.”

When it comes to timing, however, Sulejmani isn’t into the waiting game. Neither is Mike Kirchschlager, freshman in DGS.

“Usually, if a girl waits an hour to respond to one of my texts, I’ll have already forgotten about what we were talking about,” he said.

I told Kirchschlager about the way we women operate: waiting hours, or even days to respond to a guy’s text. He laughed and shook his head.

Lyles had a similar response. “I feel like, if it takes her that long, then I must not have been that important to respond to.”

Right then and there, I realized my hypothesis was reinforced. I made a mental note to tell every female I know that guys don’t buy into the timing games. By taking forever to respond, we aren’t playing hard to get. We’re simply confusing the boys.

What’s more, the amount of time we put into our flirtatious texting is ridiculous. Perhaps we should take a few tips from the men of the UGL. They aren’t obsessing over our texts, so why should we freak out about theirs?

I walked back to the table where the girls were sitting, eager to share my discoveries with them. “Hi, you don’t know me,” I said hurriedly as I sat down across from them. “But you know how you were talking about waiting a few hours to respond to that guy?”

They stared. “Um, yeah…” the blonde replied, her brow furrowed.

“Well, don’t. Respond right away. Otherwise, he’ll lose interest. Guys don’t understand the way we think,” I proclaimed, fighting the urge to stand up on my chair and shout.

Okay, okay, I’m kidding. I didn’t creepily approach the girls, although I probably should have. Instead, I’ll cling to the hope that they will read this column and learn the truth about texting, as told by the men of the UGL.

Melanie is a freshman in Media.