I first saw Daniel in our Wildlife Bio class my second year at Clemson. He was sitting all the way in the front row, asking all these questions. I, like the cool kids, was sitting in the back of the class, ready to go home. It was syllabus week. Why was I even there? Anyway, class finally ended and his row was the first to make it to the door. I happened to glance over to see who all was in the class and I remember thinking "hmm, he's pretty good looking...for a freshman." On I went to my next three classes, and wouldn't you know, he was in every single one of them. A few weeks go by and he ended up asking me to study with him for dendrology (tree class) every week. That same day he ended up walking me to my math class, clear across campus. Him walking me to math class became a weekly tradition.

Daniel proposed to me on the beach in Charleston. We both took the day off work to take our puppy, Koda, to the vet for some shots. Daniel wanted to make it a vacation day since it was not often we were both off work, and no one would be at the beach on a Monday. So after the vet, we went to the beach and parked at one of the stations we thought no one would be at. We left the sunscreen at home on accident, but there was a great breeze (a little chilly at first) so we did not even think about it. Oops. After lounging on the beach and playing with Koda in the surf, we decided to walk down the beach and get dinner. We ended up having to eat at The Dinghy, since Banana Cabana was closed. After dinner, he wanted to walk back down the beach to get pictures of Koda with the sunset. I was already burnt and wanted to walk back on the streets. He convinced me, and we walked down the beach counting jelly fish that had washed up with the surf. As we get to our exit, we find this bottle just at the edge of the water with a note in it. We give each other a look (because how often is there actually a note!?) and we read it. It sounds like a Civil War soldier writing to his loved on while he is at Fort Sumter. As I finish the note, and the author asks "one last request..." Daniel gets on one knee beside me. The whole thing was caught on camera by our friend and photographer, Megan Cauthen. It was so unexpected and special.

My first year at Clemson, being my sophomore year, I had these two classes; Wildlife Biology 3000, and Dendrology (the study of trees and their identification). After the first week of classes were over, I spent the weekend looking over my class materials because we had a quiz coming up in Dendrology (Dendro). After a quiet weekend of studying it was quiz time and let me tell you what, it was a pretty tough quiz. I passed it but barely. Before I knew it, the class period was over and my classes were done for the day. As I was walking out of the door of the building where my class was, I heard someone call out behind me in the friendliest of voice “Hey! How did you do on the quiz?”. I slowly turned around while walking to see who said that because I was not sure if they were talking to me or not. As I turned around, I saw this girl with most beautiful eyes and short brown hair walking up next to me. I was trying to figure out where I had seen her before. I vaguely remembered she was in my Dendro class. I replied to her, “I passed, but didn’t do that great”. We introduced each other and all of the sudden we were lost in conversation and I decided to walk her to her last class. We had so much in common and found out that we lived in the same off campus apartment complex. Before I knew it, we were at the building where her class was and said our “see ya later’s”. I went to head back to the bus station to go home and found out that I had missed the bus and the next one wasn’t going to be there until two hours later. But I wasn’t mad. I really enjoyed talking to her and she was worth missing the bus for. Fast forward a couple weeks later and we were hanging out more and more. We would study for our classes together. We would spend hours and hours studying and looking at leaves for our Dendro class. We would even go for walks on campus at night to look at trees before our quizzes the next day. I just loved spending time with her.