WCU

WCU is the university Tessa attends and graduates from, and the institution where Hardin says he stopped smoking after he started. It anchors a formative period for both characters: Tessa later recognizes that she entered college before she knew who she was or what work would make her happy, while her graduation gives visible form to an achievement she once doubted she would reach.

Tessa’s Education and Changing Direction

Tessa reflects that she did not know who she was when she enrolled at WCU. Although she had been proud of her degree and had expected to build a career in its field, by the time she and Hardin were living in New York City, she no longer wanted that work. She still loved reading, but she had changed her mind about her professional path. Her account makes WCU more than a setting for study: it marks the point at which an early choice, made while she was only beginning adult life, could later be reconsidered rather than treated as a permanent definition of herself.

Tessa’s graduation brings that uncertainty into sharp contrast with accomplishment. Looking at herself in the mirror, she remembers the many times during the previous four years when she had not been sure she would make it through college. Now she has graduated. Hardin applauds, and her mother cries; the two sit together, an image of family proximity accompanying Tessa’s individual milestone.

Hardin and the University

WCU also appears in Hardin’s account of his smoking. When Tessa asks when he began, he says he had always smoked, but not since starting at WCU. The remark establishes a connection between his time at the university and a change in his behavior, without suggesting that the change erased his earlier habit. In the scene, Tessa reacts sharply to his cigarette: she takes it from his mouth and drops it into his partly full glass, interrupting his smoking in the moment.

Graduation and Significance

At Tessa’s graduation, her mother comes to stand beside her in the bathroom and tells her she is proud. She is dressed in an evening gown, with carefully curled and sprayed blond hair and nails painted to match Tessa’s cap and gown. Tessa recognizes that the outfit is excessive for the occasion, but does not want to diminish her mother’s pride. As an adult, she understands that her mother had groomed her to succeed and to become what her mother herself could not be.

The ceremony thus joins two meanings of WCU in Tessa’s story: it is where she completes a difficult course of study, and the point of departure for a career expectation she later allows herself to revise. Her degree remains an achievement, but it no longer obliges her to follow the field she once selected. Graduation also briefly brings Hardin and her mother together in support of her, making the university’s role personal as well as educational.