A Story About Growing Up Fast and Fighting for What You Love
Getting into college is one thing; becoming a mother at college is quite another
Logline
When pregnancy disrupts her college plans in 1990, a determined Dartmouth student defies expectations by continuing her degree while balancing motherhood and life as a military wife.
Synopsis
In 1989, Courtney Cook arrives at Dartmouth College from rural Wyoming, unaware of how much it will expand her horizons beyond her conservative Christian upbringing. She quickly connects with a tight-knit group of friends and falls for Luke, a senior ROTC cadet whose quiet faith and sense of purpose captivate her.
When Courtney becomes unexpectedly pregnant, she faces a crisis that challenges her religious values, academic aspirations, and sense of identity. Defying expectations from all sides, she chooses to keep the baby, marry Luke, and somehow continue her education. As Luke begins his military career with deployments to Somalia and humanitarian missions, Courtney navigates motherhood, academics, and an increasingly complex relationship with her faith.
At Dartmouth, she confronts judgment from both religious friends who question her priorities and academic peers who can't relate to her circumstances. At Fort Drum, she feels equally out of place among military wives. Exhausted and overwhelmed, Courtney finds unexpected strength in female friendships and begins to forge her own definition of womanhood, motherhood, and success.
Set amidst the corporatized feminism of 1990s America, this coming-of-age drama explores what it’s like to experience an unplanned pregnancy against the backdrop of an Ivy League campus in the “women can have it all” era of 90s feminism.
Writer Statement
College, A Love Story isn't just a story I wrote; it's a story I lived. I was that girl from Wyoming who showed up at Dartmouth, completely unprepared for what life had in store. Being a young mom, wife and student all at the same time in the early 90s gave me a front-row seat to the question: Can you really have it all?
The answer was, and still is, elusive, but the lesson I learned really young is to get really clear about who and what you love—whether it’s a partner, a child, a place, a vocation—anything and everyone that brings you joy. It’s about the kind of love that grows through challenges, not swipes and filters. And it’s about having the courage to fight for what you love—whether or not anyone else thinks you should.
This is a story about owning your choices the best you can and finding strength in the messy, beautiful reality of a life that doesn't go according to plan.
And one more thing: this is a story that offers nuance: it’s a journey through seemingly contradictory spaces—religious and academic, traditional and progressive—it doesn’t polarize or villify. There’s nothing to be gained from simplistic answers and dogma; the world is way too big to be that small.