Rejected by Every College in One Day, He Met His Future Wife on His First Night at Notre Dame

Tim O'Shaughnessy showed up on Patrick's first night at Notre Dame with a fake ID in hand. Patrick O'Shaughnessy, the investor and founder of the media company Colossus, was a sophomore transfer who knew almost no one, and Tim, a distant cousin from the Midwest whom he barely knew, had decided to bring him into his Notre Dame social circle.

O'Shaughnessy had been a strong student as a young boy, then attended a giant high school in Connecticut with 4,000 students, where he partied too hard and did not take school seriously. One day, at a friend's house, his father called and told him to come home because a pile of very small envelopes from colleges was waiting. He had been rejected everywhere he applied, with all the news landing on the same day.

After calling Notre Dame to ask which schools had a compatible curriculum, O'Shaughnessy went to one of them, earned very good grades, and transferred. Through Tim, he met Lauren, now his wife of 20 years, as well as his best man and the only other groomsman at his wedding who was not a family member.

As a transfer, O'Shaughnessy says he got no big orientation, just a room number. He knew only "a couple of other transfer students," as O'Shaughnessy put it, and describes himself at the time as shy and unsure in new social situations. Tim filled the gap for six months, calling friends before nights out to say he was sick and could not come, but Patrick was coming, and would they show him a good time. He did it "over and over and over again," O'Shaughnessy said.

That first night, Tim arrived with an ID that said Patrick was "five foot four with blonde hair and blue eyes," O'Shaughnessy recalled. They walked into a bar called Boat Club, which admitted him on that ID and closed permanently about three weeks later for letting people in that way. Lauren was the first girl he talked to inside.

He was 19 and she was 20, and they have been together, married, and raising children ever since. O'Shaughnessy, now 40, says they have been together for more than half his life. He says they have heard the brain matures around 25, so that includes six years together before his brain was fully developed.

Tim died tragically young. O'Shaughnessy says Tim is often on his mind, because without those introductions the family life he cares about most would not exist. As O'Shaughnessy puts it, "whole lives are downstream of simple, quick acts of kindness."