When I met my bf he was a 28 year old bartender, and college drop out of nearly 10 years. He hated his life as a bartender, hated how disposable he was to his bosses and serving unkind and ungrateful people, and felt incredibly trapped. He had no support system (his mom left the family when he was 12, and his dad died when he was 20... two years after kicking him out of his home). Struggling to buy food and pay rent with no safety net made him feel incapable of taking on a difficult major, and eventually of staying in school at all.

When he met me, I was a 27 year old homeowner who had a stable job and had graduated from a prestigious university. He said meeting me made him want to be a better man. His bar job at the time was fairly well paying, so he finally had enough of a cushion that he felt comfortable tackling school. I also supported him a lot, in almost every way you can support someone.

As a result of his hard work and our teamwork, he was admitted to UC Berkeley this Friday to study mechanical engineering. He feels a mix of emotions. Relief. Fear. Sadness (of putting his life completely on hold to completely dedicate himself to this). Our relationship suffered tremendously; it's been very hard to barely have time to interact with one another. It's been hard for him to compete with people 10 years younger than him who have been training their minds since middle school to be in top shape.

But he's extremely grateful to be on this path, as brutal as it's been and will continue to be. He felt he had no future before this, and now he's earned a 4.0 and is going to the #3 engineering school in the country. He has a real shot of working at a good job that fulfills him and earns him a good living. He's not trapped feeding people beer anymore, and freaking out about going to the doctor because he has no medical insurance, and wondering what the hell is going to happen to him when he gets old because he has no retirement and may not even get bar jobs past a certain age.