Why I Cried at Graduation

Cortney's team from the first year (minus Tom). TS, Leighann, Kailias, Cort

The Softball Team. A great group of guys. This picture was taken after the student vs. faculty game. It was the first time the students won in 8 years (the teachers are all on competitive leagues) and they are holding the trophy- a briefcase.

This post is long overdue and I’ve wanted to write this for a while, but every time I stop to think about what I want to write, I start crying. These last 18 months have been filled with so many memories and I can’t help but being slightly above devastated this chapter of our lives is over. Graduate school changed our lives. And its so hard to try to think of a way to describe the whole thing, but I think the only way to explain these last 2 years for us is this—excruciatingly joyful.

We sat at graduation and I had flashbacks of our entire experience at the Fisher College of Business and couldn’t help but cry. I thought of how we decided to come to The Ohio State in the first place. We applied late, but Cortney had gotten scholarships at Notre Dame, OSU, Purdue, and Wake Forrest. Purdue had given him a full-ride, plus a Graduate Assistant position, which means we would have made money to go there, and for some reason we turned it down. In all honesty, I don’t know why we did that, but we just felt like OSU was for us. Fisher was the only Business School we visited and at the end of our visit we had a meeting with Steve Mangum, the Dean of the Program. As we sat there, Cortney explained that he was the first college graduate of his family and came from a lower-middle class broken home and never thought of himself at a graduate student, let alone at a major university. Tears welled up in the Dean’s eyes as he said, “Cortney, that’s exactly why you should be here.” Dean Mangum explained the story of Max Fisher (whom the school was named after) who was a Jewish-Russian immigrant who came to America with $50 and went on to becoming a multi-millionaire but said he owed everything he made in his life to the education we received at Ohio State. We knew then why we had turned down Purdue—there was no question where we were supposed to be.

We moved into our little apartment and started meeting our neighbors. OSU is unique in that the MBA program has its own student housing, so a large majority of MBA students live in the same place which, for us, made the experience so much richer being able to become close friends with our classmates. Our neighbor upstairs, Chris, knocked on our door one day to see if we wanted to share a wireless internet connection and that started a great friendship and still makes me laugh and cry. We have been through a lot with Chris, to say the least. I’ve almost thrown up in his apartment (I was pregnant, of course), shared many pizzas, watched Cav’s games together, been through months and months of drama with his girlfriend Janice, and Chris was one of the first people to hold Will when we got home from the hospital and became his adopted uncle.

I cried thinking about those first few months. I was so sick. We didn’t have any health insurance and I wasn’t able to get into see a doctor until after I had lost more than 20 lbs. The first year of Business School was very time intensive for Cort, as he had been out of school for 5 years. There were more than a few times when I would need to go to the hospital because I couldn’t stop throwing up, and I’d go pick up Cortney from school and we’d head over to Riverside Hospital so I could get some much needed fluids. After an hour or so, we’d head home and Cortney would help me up the stairs (I couldn’t walk up stairs alone for months) and help me into bed and then leave for the rest of the night to finish group projects. Thankfully, Cortney’s teammates were very understanding and picked up a lot of his load.

I cried thinking about going into the Medicaid office to apply for insurance and food stamps and being treated like I was less than a human. I am so thankful there were so many programs to help us out while I was too sick to work, but I can’t even begin to say how thankful I am we don’t have to go through that every 6 months anymore. But I tear up, just now as I’m writing this that I live in a country that believes in helping its citizens in need. We would not have survived had it not been for heating assistance, WIC, Medicaid, and food stamps. Will, alone, cost $50,000 and that would have been the end of life as we know it if we had to pay for it. And I am so thankful for Cortney’s job so we get great gov’t benefits and our next child will only cost $300!

I cried thinking about how excited everyone was when Will was born. Literally, he was a celebrity. People I didn’t even know would flock to me and know Will’s name and constantly ask me how I was doing. We were one of the first people to have a baby in school and because most of the students in the program to be single, births are quite the event. We took Will to the first Kentucky Derby party and everyone cheered when we walked in! I’ve truly never felt so special in my life. Everyone was so concerned about Will and I and I just felt so blessed that Cortney was in contact with such caring people each day.

I cried thinking about what a trial looking for a job was. Basically the entire 2^nd year of the program was a fruitless job search and I can’t even begin to count how many interviews Cortney went to that ended up in a hiring freeze or no call back. It was so frustrating. Each time Cortney would come home from an interview, he just looked down, and it broke my heart and I’m tearing up just thinking about all those months where we really didn’t know what we were going to do. In the midst of this, our loan money ran out and we literally had nothing left except for the $100 I made each week babysitting Aurick. We didn’t eat out for more than 5 months and we never drove our car for more than 2 months because we didn’t have the money to even fill our car with gas. And we made a decision that we wouldn’t tell our parents, even though both of them would have helped, we didn’t want anyone to worry or feel sorry about us. We were determined to do this on our own.

As the winter progressed and we had no job, we had decided that we would move back to CA to live with my parents after graduation because we really had nowhere else to go. I felt like I needed to be the supportive wife and be encouraging in such hopeless times, but at time progressed, I just couldn’t hide it anymore, I felt like I didn’t have the strength to be the glue. About every 3 days, one or both of us would break down and cry about the uncertainty of our situation. It was just heart-wrenching, to say the least.

On one day in particular, our transmission went out and it would cost $2000 to replace. It just seemed too much to bear. How could we possibly pay for this? And we only had one car, so we really couldn’t go anywhere. One night we read one of our favorite conference talks by Jeffrey R. Holland called, “An High Priest of Good Things to Come” where he recounts the move his family made for him to attend graduate school at Yale amidst serious car troubles along the way and no money to pay for them. He recounts now that if he could give any advice to himself back then, he would have said, “Cheer up! There are so many great things that are waiting for you ahead.” Cortney and I just bawled. We knew there were great things ahead of us, but it was just so hard to keep our chin up in such uncertainty.

Within 2 months, Cortney got his job offer at OSU and we were overcome with emotion and gratitude. We had a job after graduation, but we still had no money in the meantime, but we were just so happy we had a job, we didn’t care we were eating grilled cheese all the time. The 2^nd annual Derby Party was coming up and I was a little nervous about going because I didn’t have anything nice to wear that I hadn’t worn the year before. It wasn’t going to stop me from going to the party, but I just felt a little self-conscious. A few weeks prior to this, my mom sent me $40 to buy a new dress for Easter, but I knew when I got it in the mail that I wouldn’t be using it to buy a dress, it would be going to buy gas. But I was thankful for it no matter what we used it for. The day before the party, I decided last minute I would try to get my hair cut because it hadn’t been cut for the better part of 6 months. With the little bit of money I had leftover, Cortney and I each picked out something at Goodwill to wear to the Derby Party- he got a Banana Republic shirt, and I got a pink frilly skirt totaling $6. And I’ll always cry a little thinking about what a different that $40 made in my life that day to just be able to get a haircut and a used skirt. Thanks Mom.

I cried thinking about how many times I had walked around Fred Beekman Park. I’ve walked around that park for exercise, to get something off my chest, for recreation, in stress, in elation, you name it, I’ve had every emotion possible walking around that park. I bet if you added up all the times we walked around that park it would be upwards of 1000. We also spent a lot of time there for softball games. Cortney was invited to play on an MBA student team and we had so much fun at those games. Everyone on the team filled their Coke bottles with Jack Daniels (except Cort) because “drinking” at the game was illegal, although any umpire with half a brain could tell everyone was drinking. In the entire time we were in school, Cortney nor I, had ever been encouraged to drink. And I think that says just as much about our friends as it does about us. We were so welcomed by everyone and I loved that everyone still invited us to the drinking parties, even though they knew we didn’t drink. We always went to the first half and slid out the back door when things were getting a little more “drunk”. I always appreciated so much that they wanted us to be there no matter if we were joining in the festivities or not and I’m sure I’m the only Mormon on earth who would say this, but I’m really going to miss those drinking parties.

As I sat in the stands during the graduation ceremonies, I listened as all the graduates names were called and smiled as I knew most of them by name and I couldn’t help but think that I wanted the best for all of them. They were all so talented and we felt privileged to spend these last 2 years with them. Jon Yoon, Chris Wayda, Carolyn Schmidt, Lauren Ross, Megan Glenn, Megan Bird, Leighann Burke, Kailias Joshi, Tom Funkhouser, Jon Ottenbright, and the list went on. All just fantastic people whom I know we’ll be sending Christmas cards to forever and always catching up when they’re in town.

And now that it’s over, it still makes me cry. Cortney and I have both been very surprised at how hard of a transition this has been for us. Both of us cry about it all the time. We have a great life and we love it and feel so blessed, but we’ll never have that student life again where we had the time to be with friends all the time and not very many things to worry about. It was really hard for me to not walk out my front door around 4 p.m. and be able to talk to 3 different people having a beer. And I really miss talking about business things on a regular basis. Terms like supply chain, ROI, and options became part of my vernacular and I loved that I didn’t have anyone to do “mommy” things with—I really felt like I was getting an MBA too.

During our time at school, our marriage was so strong because it absolutely had to be for us to get through that together. And although I feel that we’ll always have a strong marriage, in part because of the things we’ve experienced these past 2 years, I’m fear we’ll never have to be that unified again.

By far one of the biggest blessings of being in school has been learning to live on hardly no income and to be perfectly fine about it. Our first year of school I spent way too much time constantly thinking about the next thing: we’ll have more money when Cortney has his internship, we’ll be less stressed when Cortney has a job, we’ll be more stable when we own a home, etc. But if I could change anything about our experience, I would change my attitude that first year. We had far less money the second year and I feel that was the better of the 2 years. I wish I would have embraced our poverty and taken Elder Worthlin’s “Come What May and Love It” advice to heart. I would have been much happier.

I know without a doubt we were protected and blessed in so many ways these past 2 years and I want to write all this down now while its still fresh in my mind so fully express the gratitude in my heart for all the trials we endured. I never thought I would ever be the kind of person to pray in gratitude for trials, but I just feel so blessed that we were so pushed to the limit. It helped us in so many ways and I want this to be an encouraging record for my children to look back on to give them any extra faith they might need to be able to step outside the comfort of a salary and get an education. I’m positive there were quite a few people, our parents included, who thought we were crazy for throwing away two very healthy salaries to go back to school, but these past 2 years have been so much more than getting another degree. And for those of you who ever thought that we were crazy to do this, I’m here to say it was worth everything. I would never take back anything about these last 2 years.

And now, in a matter of 6 weeks, we have a healthy salary, a modest home, and financial security and I can’t help but wonder, why us? And now I’m crying again. Really, why us? A good portion of Cortney’s class still doesn’t have jobs whom both of us would agree are in the top 10% of the class in intelligence and talent. I just don’t feel like we deserve this stable life when so many of our friends and family can’t find jobs. I feel like someone waved a magic wand over us. We live a very modest lifestyle and for the most part, still keep our student budget, but yet I want for nothing. I can’t even think about anything else that I could ever want in my life. I have a great husband, a healthy little boy, and a roof over my head with walls I can paint. I really don’t have any idea why we have the things we do, but I’ll always be so grateful for them because our lives in the last month have truly been answers to prayers.

I think I’ll always tear up when I think about Fisher. It just brings back so many great memories. Its one of those events that you wish you videotaped in your head so you can watch it over and over again because you loved it so much.

At the end of graduation, there was a 10 minute slide show of every school event and party for the last 2 years. All three McAllisters were graced in the slide show. I smiled. I was so happy we had the chance to come here. I went down and met Cort and we hugged for a long time. It was the kind of hug that said a novel, one we wrote ourselves that no one else could hear. We just knew that other person was thinking all the same things during that graduation and we just smiled, wiped away a few tears, took some pictures, and promised we’d never forget what a wonderful 2 years it’s been.