When Cris Hernandez shakes the president's hand and grasps her accounting diploma during commencement at the University of South Carolina on Friday, a number of people will share in her success.

First in line will be her husband, Col. Bryan Hernandez, commander of the 165th Infantry Brigade.

"For two years, she's been hammering away" at earning her degree, he said. She has balanced the requirements of being the spouse of a senior officer -- "trying to help me with the families of the cadre" -- and meeting the needs of the couple's sons, Brooks, 13, and Carson, 10.

Then will come the military spouses with whom Cris Hernandez carpooled kids and commiserated about bearing up under so many demands -- Jennifer Pipes and Stephanie Haydt. Pipes is the wife of Sgt. 1st Class Franklin Pipes of the 1st Battalion, 34th Infantry Regiment and Haydt, the wife of Command Sgt. Maj. Brian Haydt of the 1st Battalion, 61st Infantry Regiment.

Both women are just hours away from completing degrees themselves -- Pipes, an associate's degree in early-childhood education through online courses from Ashworth College in Georgia and Haydt, a master's degree in clinical mental-health counseling from South University.

All three women have stellar grade-point averages -- a 3.9, 3.88 and 4.0, respectively. That can be tough for any student, but it's harder for those who must follow their spouses, sometimes stopping and starting classes with little notice.

"Sometimes it can be difficult," said Haydt, who also works for Child and Youth School Services on post. "For me, it's just trying to fit that time in to study … juggling a schedule between my husband's commitments and what my two boys have."

In Hernandez's case, it means not graduating summa cum laude, even though she earned a 3.9 GPA and is a member of Beta Sigma Gamma, the honor society at USC's Darla Moore School of Business. Hernandez completed enough courses to earn her diploma but not the 60 hours required to graduate summa.

That kind of thing wouldn't happen to a student who had both started and finished studies at USC. But someone who starts one place, picks up another, possibly switching majors as the result of moving? It's the risk a military spouse takes when she or he attends college.

Haydt, for example, chose a more intense eight-quarter program over a 10-quarter program because "I was worried about PCS'ing and just wanted to get it done."

Bryan and Cris Hernandez have been many places in their 14 years of marriage. They were posted at Fort Jackson from 2009 to 2011. Then Bryan deployed from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to Afghanistan for a year.

When the couple returned to Fort Jackson afterward, Bryan made a bargain with his wife: It was time for her to stop working as a bookkeeper and complete her interrupted studies.

"She's been sacrificing a lot for me," Bryan said, "so it was nice she could do something for herself.

"You see it sometimes -- military spouses aren't allowed to chase their own goals."

Cris Hernandez began with six hours in the summer of 2013, a light schedule to ease her into the demands of classes.

Soon, she increased her load. She woke up at 6 in the morning to study before her kids went to school. When she ferried kids to soccer games, she watched as long as they were on field. When they weren't, she pointed her headlamp -- the kind you get in the hardware store -- at a textbook for whatever class she was taking. Her husband stayed up late to edit her papers.

She still cooked dinner every night -- he was barred from the kitchen -- and split house-cleaning chores with her husband.

Except for the laundry. He could do his own, but he had the frightening tendency to wash blue jeans with white shirts.

"Here's the order that I decided to put (priorities) in," said Cris Hernandez. "I put my school, my family, then everything else."

Cris Hernandez is excited that she's closer to becoming an accountant, although she couldn't attend job fairs because her husband's command at Fort Jackson has come to an end. She hopes she can find something near the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, but she isn't sure she will.

Anyway, first, there are boxes to pack for the move in a few weeks.

"What is hard for me, graduating in the top 10 percent of my class, is not to have a job," Cris Hernandez said. She also couldn't sign up for post-graduate internships -- that uncertainty is "part of being a military spouse."

She won't stop working on her education.

"I love numbers," she says of accounting. "I have a passion for numbers." She intends to complete a master's and study for her CPA.

But more important, she said, was setting an example for her sons -- showing them that "if you want something, you can do it."

When she attended a recent ceremony for Beta Sigma Gamma, her son Brooks told her afterward, "I'm so proud of you, Mom."

Coming from a 13-year-old, that statement might even top the president's handshake on Friday.