"While you are a student, start scoping out the men you might consider marrying." This is the main idea that author Susan Patton tries to convey throughout her book, Marry Smart. Susan Patton is a middle-aged divorced mother of two sons and went to Princeton University. Marry Smart is her way of trying to help the young girls out there so they don't make the same mistakes she made. I see her as a woman with low self esteem and regret from her past with old fashioned views who needs to wake up and realize that just because her life didn't work out how she wanted it to, doesn't mean that she should be trying to "encourage" young women into giving up their young life and get married when they don't even know who they are yet. .
Susan Patton thinks that while you are in college this is the best time to be looking for a husband. She says that college years are the best because the men are sophisticated and smart. Yes in some cases this is true, but most of the time it is so far from that. College students, men and women, aren't in college thinking about settling down. The "sophisticated" men there go out and drink and party. Spring Break for college students has gotten so crazy that a movie was actually made about what college students do over spring break. College is a time for you to find out who you are and get an education. How can you know what you want in a person that you are going to spend the rest of your life with, when you don't even know who you really are? .
The whole point of going to college is to get an education and better yourself for when you go out into the world to get a job. As she is discussing finding a husband she talks about college as only being important for finding a husband. She only mentions once that having an education can better you for the future, even if you are a stay at home mother. This is irritating to me because it makes it seem like women depend on men to support them; that they should get married either before you graduate or soon after, so you can start having kids.