If You Wanna Be My Lover, You’ve Gotta Respect That My Education Comes First Right Now

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I’m the first to admit that I’m a sucker for big love.

I want to meet my person, just like everybody else – the one that I can settle down with, build a life alongside and eventually stand in front of in a wedding dress and say ‘I do’ to.

I’m willing to give up a lot in the name of love. I’ll give love my time, my energy and my patience (sometimes more patience than it feels like I have).

But there’s one compromise I refuse to make when it comes to finding love – I won’t put any man ahead of my education.

I’m a lover, a giver and a (level-headed) romantic. But right now I am a student first and foremost.

Right now the love of my life is the degree that I’m pursuing and the possibilities that it will open up for me later in life. Right now my life is more about essays, exams and final projects than it is about butterflies, first dates and stolen kisses.

I have big plans for my future. Plans that will help me to achieve financial independence, serve the world around me in a meaningful way and eventually allow me to provide for a family. But in order for those plans to fall into place, I have to prioritize learning right now. I have to let my grades and my ambitions be the one thing that I never let slide.

This doesn’t mean that I refuse to date.

If the right guy walks into my life, I’m not about to send him packing. But he’s going to have to understand that a thousand-word essay will always be prioritized above a candlelit dinner. That my average means more than my relationship status. That for the next two years of my life, my schedule will contain more all-nighters and library binges than date nights and cuddle sessions.

Right now I need to be selfish and focus on my future.

Because the future is something I have big plans for. My career is something I have been dreaming about for even longer than I’ve been dreaming about my future husband.

And in order to get to the career I want to have, I first have to commit myself to my education. I first have to read a thousand scholarly articles, prepare for a thousand exams, write (and then re-write and then re-write) an endless stream of essays, and put my personal life on the back burner.

This might seem selfish or unfair. But to be honest, I wouldn’t date any man who didn’t put me second to his education as well.