It does not have to be. There is good new and bad news; here's the bad news:

It's probably going to keep being a negative experience and it's very probably you, not them. Here's the good news:

You're awesome. Know how I know that? Cause dating is always a negative experience for you. Don't believe me? Look at the young women who are out there having the dating fun that your mom says that you're supposed to be having and look me right in the monitor and tell me that when their boyfriends blow in their ears they don't thank him for the refill.

You're not an airhead. You are however, following the crowd a bit. You're a young woman looking for a relationship with a good guy and because everyone else finds whatever it is that they've settled for by dating, you figure you'll look there too. It's certainly understandable, but it's probably not your best move.

When I was in college, Microsoft came and recruited on campus. It was a smart move on their part - we had an excellent computer science program and some of the best and brightest graduated from there. Walmart didn't come and recruit on campus. It wasn't that their executives weren't smart - it was because it was a bad fit. Dating, the way you are going about it, is a bad fit for you.

And incidentally, that your mom says this should be fun at your age is not a dig against your mom; like omegalamed said, 'The world has changed'.