Our Story: Our College Years

Ron and I started dating about a month after I started college, he was a year ahead of me. Our college years are pretty special because it is when we developed our really strong relationship. I was not at all expecting to find my husband in college, I don’t even think I had thought of the possibility. And he certainly had one goal in college, to have a career working for General Motors (spoiler: Ron works for GM now!). I think it was so fitting and perfect timing, meeting one another in college. We were figuring out who we were ourselves but also figuring out who we were together and navigating it side by side.

You may remember me mentioning about our quirky college. We had classes on campus for 3 months and then we moved and worked full time co-op jobs the following 3 months. And back and forth for 4+ years. While on campus Ron and I lived at our respective fraternity housing. Then when it came to work term we lived in an apartment together.

Of course during school term we had time on our own without one another but we did still spend a great deal of time together. We almost always had our meals with each other. Which mostly consisted of me going to his fraternity house, their cook Char is the BEST! Each term had its own struggles. School was intense and stressful and so we didn’t always have a ton of time for one another. We often laugh at the fact that the term that we met Ron performed his worst academically…hmmm I wonder why 😉 Though I do also have to say that the term after that he performed his best! I know for a fact that I survived my sophomore year in large part to the support and encouragement from Ron. It was a tough year mentally because I didn’t think I was cut out for engineering and wanted to quit but he did all he could to make me believe otherwise.

Work term was tricky figuring out how to live together. We were learning how to kindly live with a significant other as well as with someone of the opposite gender. We quickly learned how to be a team though. Each of us had our strengths and we used those to make it all work. We divvied up dinner with him usually making the main while I made sides, something we still often do. We split the chores on who liked what better or sometimes who was better at what and those responsibilities still hold today.

I truly do believe that it was our college years that helped us to build such a strong foundation for our relationship. There is very little that Ron and I disagree on, we both are constantly working towards a common goal, and we understand how to best communicate with one another.