For better or for worse…
Waking up to the same face every morning is just one of the possible benefits of being married. Some say more time to study is another.
Many students at Utah State University are currently married or engaged and trying to get through school at the same time. To some, being engaged is the hard part.
“Engagement sucks. No one tells you that until you’re engaged and you’ve already decided how long the engagement is going to be,” Rose Lowry, a senior in nursing who was married in October, said.
Balancing schoolwork and wedding plans is not as easy as it looks, she said.
“You have to prioritize and decide what’s most important. Our grades both suffered. My test scores went way down, but now they’re getting better,” Lowry said.
“Being engaged is like being torn between two lifestyles. You don’t feel like you’re single, but you’re not married,” Marshall Lowry, Rose’s husband and a sophomore majoring in broadcast and communications at Brigham Young University-Idaho, said.
“The hardest part is not focusing on your schoolwork or the wedding. I guess just deciding which one to focus on,” Marshall said.
Marshall is taking online classes so Rose can keep going to school in Logan.
“I’m taking classes I don’t need just to keep my scholarship. So that’s putting me back about a year. Then she’ll graduate and we’ll move to Rexburg. In the long run, it’s going to be worth it money-wise – unless I lose my scholarship. It’s kind of hard because I don’t even care about theater. It’s been hard, but it’s been interesting,” Marshall said. “If I couldn’t do the online classes, I was going to drop out.”
“And it’s better than driving back and forth from Rexburg every day,” Rose said.
“When you’re engaged, everything seems logical,” Marshall said. “I can drive six hours a day, no problem. I like driving.”
“Just think of how much that would have cost us in gas. And that’s not counting speeding tickets,” he said.
Jessica McAllister, a junior in dietetics who got married in August, said, “[Engagement] was horrible. I was working two jobs, trying to go to school and trying to plan a wedding – it was horrible.”
Bronson McAllister, Jessica’s husband and a junior majoring in horticulture, said, “It’s like hanging out with your best friend 24-7, but it doesn’t get old. It just gets better. Every time I look back, I love her even more.”
“Our social life is … well, we’re OK with hanging out with each other,” Bronson said.
Even though a student’s social life often becomes exclusive to their spouse when married, that doesn’t always ensure that grades will improve or homework will be easier.
Bronson said, “I think grades suffer just as much [when you are married].”
“It has been easier to find time to study because you aren’t worried about the social aspect of school,” Jessica said.
Especially during college, friends and roommates can fall into marriage plans at any time.
“You don’t have a desire to hang out with anyone else. It’s just so much fun,” Marshall said.
“The closest thing I can compare it to is when you graduate from high school,” he said. “You have friends that were a year younger and they are still your friends, but you go to college and it’s just hard to keep in contact because you don’t care about their high school classes anymore or their high school problems. They seem so insignificant. But then they graduate the next year and come to college and all of a sudden you’re best friends again.”
Another of the problems married couples face is agreeing on what to do with finances.
“One thing to think about is that you aren’t just paying for yourself anymore,” Marshall said.
“We went over finances right when we got engaged and just talked about everything. That helped our gradual curve up to being married. He put his name on my account, but he still had one,” Rose said.
“I think that worked for us, but I don’t think it would be good for a couple that was kind of shaky. If they’re engaged and trying to figure it out, it’s probably not a good idea. But it worked for us,” Marshall said.
Combining two backgrounds can be a hard thing to do. Especially when both people involved don’t agree on where the money should go.
“You’ve both got different perspectives on how the money should be spent and how much you have. I’ve found that his idea of a lot and my idea of a lot are very different. I’ve found that $100 to me is like $2 to him,” Jessica said. “He gets really stressed out about it and I think we’re fine. It’s just different because you’re taking two different ways of doing everything and combining it into one.”
Jessica said if a couple isn’t sure they can afford to get married, they need to think about it. “You’re already living on your own, you have a job and you’re paying for everything. Now you can do it together. We’re not any worse off financially. If anything, we’re better off,” Jessica said.
The question of whether or not to wait until graduating from college to get married is a big problem for some students. Becoming financially stable before entering marriage is the road some students are taking.
“That’s a trend going on I guess. Wait until you graduate and you’ve got a good job and then get married,” Marshall said. “But if you are waiting for everything to be right, it never will be. You’ve got to look at the blessings you get when you are married. It’s crazy – like … FAFSA.”
Jessica said, “There’s always going to be something that will keep you from doing it if you wait.”
Other than money, there are a lot of things to consider before getting married.
“There are some things you have to mesh together,” Bronson said.
“He doesn’t like Norah Jones,” Jessica said.
Bronson said, “AC/DC first thing this morning just didn’t go right for Jess.”
-hollyadams@cc.usu.edu