Married to an MBA Student

Around the time we celebrate our one year anniversary, we will also (Lord willing) be celebrating Nathan’s graduation from his MBA program. It’s been interesting being married to a student. Recently, upon hearing that Nathan and I work the same hours, someone exclaimed, “Oh, so you have the whole evening together!” Well, yes and no. Since Nathan's classes are online, we’re both in the apartment most evenings, but we can’t exactly spend every minute together. This doesn’t bother me for the most part since I’m an introvert and don’t mind having time to myself, but sometimes I’ll want to tell Nathan something while he’s reading and have to try to keep it to myself.

Of course, I also keep busy doing most of the cooking, cleaning, and grocery shopping. Nathan says he never expected his wife to do be the one to do all of that, but it wouldn’t really be fair for him to do a lot of chores on top of his school work when I don’t really have anything else to do. He does all the vacuuming though since he actually enjoys it and I dread it and also takes out the trash. He will help out with various other chores when he isn’t super busy.

Nathan getting ready to cook ostrich. He's a great cook, but he only cooks once a week at most these days.

The fun part of Nathan being a student is being able to learn along with him. A lot of his classes are IT-related and way over my head, but I’ve at least been able to pick up a few terms and concepts to make me feel somewhat more informed about technology than the average person. The classes that I find most interesting—the ones involving mainly theory and psychology—are the ones he can’t stand.

It only becomes really difficult to be married to a student when Nathan has to write a paper. While I freely admit that I almost always finished writing papers at the last minute, Nathan doesn’t even start papers until about the last minute. This is not good for my mental health. The craziest part? He still manages to write really good papers! A couple weeks ago, he started a paper the day before it was due, and managed to be one point away from a perfect score. I don’t know how he does it, and I don’t think he does either. Knowing he works well under pressure still doesn’t make it fun for either of us when he is under pressure.

I’m really looking forward to the day when he’s finally done with his classes, but I’m trying to be as supportive and understanding as possible in the meantime. After all, his extra credentials should eventually lead to extra income, so I can’t complain too much about that.

Were you or your spouse a student when you got married?