Too funny csgirl! By the way, where are you in Ohio? I just moved to AZ from Cincinnati - miss it up there too much! Maybe I'll end up at UC or OSU! Anyway, I digress...My fiance is in the masters of architecture program here at ASU and I'm post bacc. He spends 12 hours a day at the studio - I spend that time in the lab, volunteering and at the library (oh, and did I mention, in class, too!) Thank goodness we're both TOO BUSY and that we understand how overloaded the other is. I don't know if we'd work if one of us wasn't in school and the other was a 9 to 5'r.
That having been said, it takes great understanding, sympathy and compassion on the other person's part to put up with someone going through our process. All qualities that, in my opinion, you'd want in a partner. IF anyone isn't understanding of your need to be committed to the process, not too mention your future school and residency(ies), then they may not be of the ample character for the long haul, anyway. Sure, there are gorgeous fall afternoons I want to go on an impromptu picnic and my fiance has to work in the studio, and vice versa, nights when he wants to cook me a cozy dinner and I can't savor it long enough because of an organic chem quiz the next morning. But you give and take. And you schedule time together.
I will say, frankly, that while "scheduling" time together and intimacy sounds lame, it does work - and it make studying that more tolerable knowing that you've got a little romp penciled in at 9!
