It was a team effort but he did most of the heavy lifting. It was hard. He was determined and dedicated to getting through it.
He wanted to be a mechanical or structural engineer, in the beginning. He had the guidance and support of his parents and me. His father kept his thumb on him to practice calculus most nights of the week, during the academic year, both in high school and university. His mother helped him to write papers. I helped too, but that was after he had failed Introductory English twice. Mart gave up the sports he was good at and participated in, during his youth, when he began his university studies.
While it wasn’t easy academically for Mart, in his early university years, he carried the same kind of popularity he had in high school. That was easy, everybody loved him, especially the girls! Count me in!
As a result of the academic challenges, I mostly saw him one night a week during the time he was in university.
Mart failed a year of high school. From my perspective that was a lucky one. Maybe from his perspective too. It’s quite likely we would never have met since I was attending the school for the first time and it was during his last year of high school.
Summers were better for us. Come to think of it there were parts of two summers when he was away working in Sherbrooke Village doing the work to prepare for measured drawings of the historic buildings that were to be restored. I didn’t mind too much. I got some extra reading in.
We spent time in Sherbrooke Village on our honeymoon. Getting to the honeymoon was fraught with some troubles though. We broke up for about a year, I moved away, and he had another bad year of university.
Isobelisnecessary 