With this month being about all things ~love~ , I wanted to formally introduce Don on the blog, and talk a little about how we met 6, going on 7, years ago!

All the way back in 2012, when people were panicking about the end of the world, I graduated high school at the beginning of June, and started college at the end of August. I was not excited about college. I was eager to learn more and continue my educational journey, but I was anxious about being away from home (I was all of 90 minutes away), and honestly, I cried about it basically my entire first day/week/various points throughout all four years.

What made things even more stressful for me was that I was placed in my last-choice seminar: chemistry. To clarify, my college had “first-year seminars” (FYS) that ranged from a variety of topics, but were more or less an intensive that you attended with mostly everyone on your hall. Rather, we were assigned housing based on our FYS, so you lived together, studied together, went to class together, sort of like a weird but amazing little family. I don’t recall the one that I actually wanted, but I know I marked the chemistry seminar, fondly referred to as cheminar as my last choice. But there I was, in cheminar, officially one of the “cheminar kids.”

So on the first day of college, after saying a very emotional goodbye to my parents and traipsing my to and from whatever ice breakers our RAs planned, I was off to cheminar dinner. My roommate was actually in a different seminar, but we worked so well on paper (and in reality), that we’d been paired together, but being in different seminars meant that we didn’t have our first dinner together. Luckily, I’d bonded with a guy in cheminar who was just as miserable as I was about being there, so we headed to dinner together and grabbed a table.

Our table happened to have two extra chairs, and was one of the few left after we sat down. Not long after we took our seats, the last two chairs were filled by two other guys. We all introduced ourselves, ate a good meal that was definitely not representative of the dining hall food we’d later learn to stomach, and made as much small talk as possible. The guy on my right introduced himself as being from “here,” a.k.a. our college town, and made a few jokes about being so far away from home. I think it was the first time all day that I laughed or even cracked a smile. And that guy, “from here,” was Don.

Fast forward to me being less than excellent at chemistry, him being really good at chemistry, we studied together every now and then. I became friends with his roommate’s girlfriend, and found myself hanging out with their group on weekends. Many study sessions and marathons of How I Met Your Mother later - we toyed with the idea of dating.

But I was still unhappy at that school, and was looking into transferring elsewhere, and we decided doing a pseudo-long-distance thing wouldn’t really work. So we just continued to be friends. Weeks later, we both realized that we’d rather give “long distance” a shot than never give “us” a chance. He asked me to be his girlfriend, I obviously said yes, and ultimately, never transferred. Coincidentally, I now attend the school that I wanted to transfer to - the one that almost kept us apart in the first place.

During freshman orientation, our RAs repeatedly advised us all against “hallcest,” or getting involved with anyone who lived on your hall/floor, because of course it’d be horribly awkward if and when things went south. But did anyone really listen? No. It worked out for us (and some of our other friends - hi guys, if you see this!), and now, six years later, I can absolutely say that it was worth the risk.

And that’s the nerdy little story of how we met!

For the Instagram Q&A, check out this post!

xoxo,

Maya + Don