The average American keeps an expired good in the refrigerator at most a week before throwing it out. The average dater keeps an expired relationship for almost half of that.

Expiration dates.

They’re not just tiny printed labels on the side of food products to warn us when an item is going to give us a stomach ache. Expiration dates also refer to the rare predicament couples are put in when they have a specific date when their relationship has to end, most commonly diagnosed to couples leaving for separate colleges.

This situation begs the question, is it dangerous to date past your expiration date?

After an unsettling stomach ache and a half-empty bottle of Pepto-Bismol from downing an expired onion bagel, it’s safe to say that maybe it’s not 100 percent safe to eat an expired food product. Could this theory be the same for relationships?

As college students, how many of us have heard the story of the boy moving to college with the girlfriend from back home only to break up with her a couple weeks later? If I asked this question aloud, I would expect as many hands raised as Regina George’s victims.

We’ve all been told this daunting tale. Whether it was from a friend or personal experience, the move from home to college is a hit that most relationships aren’t able to weather.

This is due to numerous reasons.

Long-distance is difficult, but any distance isn’t really a walk in the park either. Many people can’t get used to the fact that they no longer are able to see their significant other five times a week, but instead if they’re lucky, maybe five times a year.

Another common cause is the extreme jealousy or paranoia felt by the loved one back home that breaks it off before anything drastic happens — which is in fact a common occurrence. It’s like the analogy of the kid in the candy shop. The boy who recently moved to college and is surrounded by an entirely new set of girls to play with. Temptations are high and inhibitions are low, making the perfect combination for cheating to ensue. With all the nasty side effects of keeping an expired relationship, it’s no wonder why people try to date healthier these days and abide to their expiration dates.

Of course along with being told the tale of the boy who broke up with his girlfriend after college, you’re also going to be told the urban relationship myth — a young couple manages to maintain a long-distance relationship for all four years of college, only to end up being joyfully reunited at the airport terminal in which a Celine Dion song plays in the background.

As we snicker at the lunacy of this story, it’s hard to think that maybe there might be some truth to what’s being told here. In an age where chivalry is dead and the closest thing to real romance is offering your seat at a bus stop, could it be that we’re just too lazy to attempt at real love?

If love is truly forever, shouldn’t it be able to withstand four years of Skype calls and yearly visits? Or is it better to end the relationship before its end date and apply the age-old tactic of being safe rather than sorry? While breaking up with someone before they break up with you is surely the way to save yourself from another difficult heartbreak, there really is no way to spare yourself from the sorry.

Expiration dates. Just like food products, it’s really just a judgment call. Do we take that extra risk and attempt to keep a relationship alive past its expiration date or do we throw it away, potentially wasting something that was still good?

Who knows what we’re supposed to do.

We’ve heard both sides to the story, the nightmares and the miracles. All I can say is this: After an hour since eating my unsettling meal I seemed to come out of it alive. Maybe the same thing could apply to relationships, that even if you take a risk and there’s an ache in the road along the way, in time you’ll still be able to heal.

And if not, there’s always Pepto-Bismol to settle your stomach.

If you’re trying to contact JASON PHAM with a lifetime supply of Pepto-Bismol for product placement, you can reach him at jpham@ucdavis.edu.

One of those really interesting people you talk to once in your life for hours after meeting as a result of a small dinner party your friend invites you to so he’ll be less alone but then leaves you alone with, well, he was into photography.

Really into photography.

We were at his house and there were antique cameras on antique-looking furniture and every now and then a small digital camera and every other now and then a semi-professional DSLR.

I knew a small amount about photography from a class I took in high school, enough that I can at least remember I enjoyed photography with a film camera. How it required much more of an effort to set up a shot because the film limited us to 12 or so pictures per roll. How the photographer was involved in every step of the process, even developing the roll of film, holding your breath because this was the first test of whether you could do this right. Whatever shots weren’t completely black were probably blurry, and then it was up to your further creativity to salvage what you had.

It’s a time-consuming process that was worth it to some but not to most. In my opinion, it was a dying art; in my new friend’s opinion, “It should die.”

I didn’t realize that this man who collected old cameras and put them on display would believe that nowadays that’s all they were good for.

He showed me a photo that I think he had on display at some gallery for a few days, and I understood. I saw a display of the best of the new photography class at an open house, and I understood. I read a half-assed article listing photography as one of the best professions to enter without a college education, and I understood. I saw another friend scroll through Instagram on her phone, and I saw it pretty clearly: Photography is easy.

To save some face, I’ll admit that there are plenty of people who put a lot of effort into photographs. Dedicated photographers will to go to great lengths to get a difficult and stunning and unbelievable photo, pushing the boundaries of physical limitations or emotional reaction to bring their audience something they’ve never seen before. Then there are people just as respectable who shine a new light on things we’ve seen a million times or something we’ve seen less often that inspires us emotionally. Then there are people who try to do either of those, but never quite get to where they’re going.

Then there are people who put a filter over shots of their food.

Technology has made it easy for anybody with a phone to stylize any of their photographs on the spot, making what used to take time and effort into a social media tool. Instagram is a verb describing an action by would-be photographers, fueled by the desire to pause the moment and share their experience. This is years of technology and spending money to make our everyday pictures look like the everyday pictures of long ago for giggles.

This is not an original realization, of course; there are feelings framing all sides of the revolution. Honestly, I’m not happy taking sides on the issue. I’m no more of a photographer than the Instagramers, but photography is fun, and I’m not taking their photographs any more or less seriously than my own, which I would consider the equivalent of doodling when compared to professional sketching.

I’m sure my friend was happy that film photography was dead because it meant that we had reached the point where it was unnecessary, and technology had allowed us to make great-looking photographs with much less effort. But the easier a task is, the harder it is to be creative.

What I’m sure he didn’t mean, and might not have realized, is how something that is supposed to inspire creativity actually diminishes it. Using the same pre-programmed filters to stylize photos is counter-creativity and forms photography into something reproducible, and often lazy. This is the real source of resentment toward a growing fad ready for collapse.

NICK FREDERICI thinks Instagram is an epidemic. Ask Nick for the cure at nrfred@ucdavis.edu.