Graduation is a pretty big check-mark as life events go but some dental school grads are going to top themselves this week with another big milestone. Noelle Walker has the story.
When Cara Coffman and Erik Hager started at Texas A&M School of Dentistry in Dallas the goal was to graduate. You might call them overachievers!
"Well, we are going to get our marriage license today, on Friday we are graduating from dental school, and then on Saturday we're getting married," Coffman said. "So it's pretty busy!"
Coffman and Hager first saw each other while interviewing at another dental school.
"I remember seeing her and thinking, wow, if these are the kind of women they're letting into dental school, this is going to be a great 4-years," Hager said.
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Neither went to that school. Unplanned, they both ended up at Texas A&M School of Dentistry. They started in 2020.
"Because of the pandemic, we actually didn't meet each other for the entirety of our first year of school because we were on Zoom the whole time," Coffman said.
In their 3rd year of dental school, the two were randomly placed in the same small clinic group.
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"We really got to know each other, I think, while we were here in the clinic," Hager said. "It was, oh yeah, this is 'The One'."
The couple said dental school prepared them for life outside of school.
"Dental school is also kind of like a microcosm," Coffman said. "It's a lot of highs and a lot of lows, as well as a lot of adapting, a whole lot of change doing things you're not comfortable with."
A few weeks after they get married, Hager will spend a year in Air Force officer training while Coffman does her pediatric dentist residency in San Antonio.
"So the first year will be...what is it...distance makes the heart grow fonder," Hager said. "Absence," Coffman said. "Yeah, there we go," Hager replied. "I think that all of this came together exactly the way it did because it was meant to come together the way it was supposed to."
The couple said the benefit of walking down the aisle to wedding bells right after walking to 'Pomp and Circumstance' is that their families and friends only need to travel once.
