What I wish I knew as a Freshman: Getting Married
Marriage.
If I were a betting man, I’d say that first sentence just halved the amount of readers. Then again, I’d also bet the rest of you are twice as interested than you were when you initially picked up the paper or scrolled onto this page. Or maybe you’re twice as skeptical. Either way, I’ve got your attention.
Unfortunately I am not nor claim to be an expert on the subject. Those who are usually have years of personal experience under their belt and don’t share all of their marriage advice anyway, knowing experience is the best teacher with matters of the heart.
Being unmarried myself, all I can offer in this article is some bachelor advice, but I’ll keep the war stories to myself. Mostly I want you to know what I wish I knew as a freshman and it begins by addressing some common rumors and ideas about marriage. If anyone ever comes up to you and says ‘Why aren’t you married yet?’ or ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea to be married in college,’ you can use this knowledge.
The first information you need has to do with how common marriage is among college students. A Facebook data survey in 2013 found 28 percent of married graduates across the country attended the same college as their spouse. This doesn’t mean they got married in college, but it does show a healthy number of people meet while studying. At Utah State University, neither the Office of Analysis, Assessment and Accreditation nor the Registrar’s Office record the percentage of married students, and there is no current record of the percentage of USU students who arrive as single freshmen and leave as married grads. However the AAA office does collect marital information voluntarily given on banner every fall. From that data, only 13.7 percent of students at USU’s main campus identified as married in 2015. Also, last year, Niche.com, a database collecting school information, ranked Brigham Young University as the most likely place for students to find a spouse and Utah State didn’t even make it on the top 50 list. So if someone tells you you’re abnormal for not getting married in college, just tell them you’re not at BYU.
Another common question among singles in college is whether or not marriage during college is even a good idea, especially financially speaking. Many are wary of the added expenses of married life while in college, but others say it is the smarter financial decision. One writer on careermeh.com reported a total savings of $28,000 due to her being married and having the benefits of married housing and Free Aplication for Student Aid, or FAFSA. However in some areas, loans to married couples are declining in number or are hard to get, so it’s a decision to be made prudently.
Another often-talked-about factor is age. According to the 2015 U.S. Census the average marrying age of men and women in the country is 29 and 27 respectively. Utah holds the low end of the data with the nation’s lowest marriage-age-median at 26 for men and 24 for women, as opposed to New York on the other end, at 30 for men and 28 for women. The USU AAA office performed a student survey among Freshmen in 2010 and found 10 percent of the Freshmen respondents identified as married.
The last factor is fairly specific to the culture at USU. Having a high population of Latter-Day Saint students (estimated around 70 percent) it’s not uncommon for jokes to be made about girls getting “Mommy degrees” or guys acting like Adam Pontipee (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers). If you’re Mormon, or even if you’re not, you’ll notice the unique dating culture in Cache Valley.
To the pros or the cons of this, I offer only one piece of advice from a quote by Viktor Frankl: “Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.”
I would argue the word success could easily be replaced by ‘marriage’ in this quote. Spend your college days becoming a better person and pursuing the things that will make your future better. If you’re being your best you, marriage—and success—will come your way, and when it needs to.
-mikeburnham3@gmail.com