The strange and the good things

Last Monday, I started working full time again, which means we’re no longer living off of student loans! 🙌 That was tough, and although this post highlights the good times, I can empathize with anyone that is struggling right now to make it through.

The very same day I started my new job, I also received my MBA yearbook in the mail and was in tears looking through the sweet notes and happy memories. It felt right to look back at my last semester of my MBA holistically. Sometimes, it’s easy to feel like this sums up 2020:

But when I look back at those three months, and up to graduation at the end of April, there were definitely some lows, lots of adjustments, but also a lot of great moments as well.

One of my goals my last semester of grad school was to involve myself in as many activities as possible and to reach out to people outside of class. That led me to getting involved in intramural soccer,

and my new favorite sport, inner-tube water polo. I used to play water polo in high school, but this is next level. It was the most fun and exciting thing I’ve ever done in sports. And it felt so refreshing to get back in a pool again! Our team name changed several times, but we ended on “winnertubes" and even got into the finals before everything essentially shut down. So I think I can say that we probably would have won and people wouldn’t know any different haha (we wouldn’t have won, but it was very fun.)

Before I moved to Nashville, I had this dream of being a great tap dancer – I kept thinking I really liked it when I was little, but my mom says that’s not true. Either way, I wanted to learn again and signed up for classes, bought shoes and went to a few of them before I moved to Nashville. I brought those shoes with me to Nashville, and then to Utah, where they sat in the closet until this last January…when I signed up for a tap dancing class held two times a week. Tap dancing is a lot harder than it looks, and my rhythm needs some work, but I completed it! I found myself tapping a little in the kitchen the other day. It’s still with me.

I learned how to play pickleball (it’s like a combination of tennis and ping-pong) and participated in the first tournament for BYU Marketing Lab.

I also went to see the Ice Castles in Midway three times (so fun every single time).

Matt and I took a quick weekend trip to Arizona to pick up a tandem bike frame and stopped by Horseshoe Bend, spent time with my second cousins/Dad’s cousins, and got to see my friend Charity at Medieval Times!

I saw my first Jazz basketball game (we lost :/), celebrated Chinese New Year, hiked Stewart Falls, the Y, and Ensign Peak in the snow.

We celebrated Matt’s birthday (with a doughnut cake from Provo Bakery – his favorite).

We danced in our last winter formal (I asked Matt out this time).

I’m also very proud of Matt. He majored in Manufacturing Engineering with a minor in Environmental Science, and graduated from the Honors program, which meant he had to put together a thesis. He chose to do his thesis on carbon fiber recycling. He presented his research several times during those first few months of school – one time at a conference in Logan, Utah and then an additional time for his honors program on BYU campus. He presented his final thesis paper for approval one day before the school shut down for quarantine.

When quarantine did happen, we found ways to make that fun too (suggestions coming for those who have run out of ideas are are still stuck at home).

Eventually, after just over a month of Zoom classes and meetings, we both graduated. Our graduations looked a lot different than we imagined. We celebrated at my in-laws house, did a diploma ceremony, and had some delicious doughnuts. My graduation was done virtually with a slideshow. Matt also made me a commemorative slideshow/movie.

We decided to order our robes for photos, but those didn’t come until the end of May, so enjoy these official pictures from a hot morning in June. Thanks to our friend James Ngai for taking them! (His landscape photography is phenomenal, but he had never done portraits before! I think he could definitely do both.)

WE ARE NO LONGER STUDENTS ANYMORE!!!! (photos for proof below ;) )

In summary, I realize this year is unexpected in a lot of ways – my graduation for instance, post-graduation, and the end of school experience in general did not look at all like how I had imagined. I know there are people struggling with a lot right now, and I’m not saying it doesn’t suck. But there are always things to be grateful for – even the small things. Or bigger things like, for me, that I survived my MBA with this guy by my side.