Q and A: Decisions

Sherry asked:

What made you decide to get married, as opposed to just living with JG? I guess my question stems from the fact that I am also a twenty-something married person, and I know why I did it. But I’m always interested to learn why other people take the plunge.

It’s interesting for me to consider this question because living together before getting married was never really up for discussion. In a lot of ways, I can see how it can make sense in that there are no legal ramifications in terms of property division in case the relationship turns sour, and I know that others might have a dim view of marriage as an unnecessary social construct. However, JG and I didn’t consider the option of cohabitation, and our religious beliefs were a big motivator behind that. Basically, we wanted to be married when we starting living together, so until our wedding, we just didn’t. JG spent the month between graduation and our wedding living out of suitcase at his parents’ house, and I held down the fort at the apartment I’d had for the previous six months.

I suspect that this explanation begs the question of why we got married right after graduation. My parents asked us to consider waiting for a year after college to get married, and then jobs and finances would be in place, and we might be in a better situation to start off. I already felt like being engaged for ten months was pushing my internal timeline, and JG and I had been together for two years when he proposed. To wait another year after that before getting married seemed like such a needless hurdle when we knew we wanted to be married, ultimately. It also didn’t seem prudent to pay for two different rent payments for a whole year when we could get married, live together, and save that money. Our apartment was on the cheap side of a low-cost town, but had we waited a year and JG got his own place, we would have wasted over $8,000, which would not have included the cost of driving to see each other. For JG and me, the numbers did not make sense to wait for a year, and besides that, we really wanted to be married. So we had our wedding a month after he graduated from college, bought a house two months later, and the rest is history.

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Laurel asked:

How did you choose your college? What did you like and dislike about the school you chose? (You may have already answered this, but I think it’s an interesting topic.)

During my senior year of school, I applied to seven colleges. Between the application fees, the essays, the visits, and my normal school life, I don’t know what I was thinking. I couldn’t apply early decision to any of them because they all had binding contracts, so I had to sweat it out until spring, when the results came in:

• Accepted: 4
• Wait-listed: 1
• Rejected: 2

Looking back, I realize that I had a rather unbalanced combination of reach, safety, and moderate-range schools, but it was fine with me to have half of the decision made for me. Of the schools that accepted me, I easily eliminated the University of Connecticut (more like University of My High School) and Virginia Tech (more financial aid, please), which left me with two remaining choices: the University of Rochester and the University of Delaware. They were my top two schools during the application process, so that was reassuring.

I had visited Rochester and Delaware during the summer before my senior year, and I thought that Rochester had a slight edge. It was more prestigious, I had an option of a 5-year master’s program in chemical engineering, and I liked the idea of being up north. Delaware was a more laid-back campus, but it had a history of undergraduate research and studying abroad, plus a good marching band. Unfortunately, I could only afford to go to Rochester by taking out massive student loans, including work-study, and Delaware would be no problem in that area. I went back to both schools during spring break of my senior year to make the final call.

During my second visit, Rochester seemed strangely cold and pretentious to me, which was partially due to the gray weather that is so common to the early spring. Maybe it was just my tour guide or the panel I attended, but there was an air that I should need to deserve to go there. If I decided to go elsewhere, Rochester would find another willing student who would. They didn’t want me, they just wanted a warm body. On the other hand, Delaware was lovely and bright. It was a beautiful day, and I soaked in the Jeffersonian architecture as I walked along the brick pathways. I talked with the honors chemistry adviser during lunch, and I was paired up with a chemistry major who was in the band. I felt like Delaware was pursuing me as a person, not just as another freshman to fill in the ranks. Granted, I think the honors program played a huge part in my recruitment by making sure that I was slotted into advantageous conversations, but it worked. I loved the campus, the professors I met, and my prospects for research and travel. Delaware was a good fit in terms of cost, and it was five hours from home. Perfect.

I had a great time in college. I switched up my major, made lots of friends, had excellent professors, and — oh, yes! — met my future husband. At times, I was frustrated with the idiotic antics that seem to come with college students, and I had one amazingly bad professor, but my experience was overwhelmingly positive. The university has wonderful memories for me, and it trips me up when I go back and things are not quite as I left them. I’m so glad that I went to Delaware and I love to go back to campus, whether it’s to catch football games in the fall, eat at our most-loved downtown restaurant, or seeing our favorite a capella group. Even though it took me a long college search to figure it out, I’ve been a Blue Hen all along.

#17, 18

Previously: Lent, hypothetical actions, superpower, television, favorites, hypothetical money