Looming boards - Tradução em português

No trecho abaixo, de um romance, o narrador explica por que o namoro do casal (primeiro a distância e depois presencial) não deu certo. O que não entendi foi o uso metafórico de "looming boards"...

They’d tried the long-distance thing and that had gone well enough, so she has moved to his city. The pressure of her boyfriend’s looming boards and landing the proper job with the right firm had not been their undoing—the old adage that absence makes the heart grow
Fonder was validated when seeing each other every day on the same city resulted in she realizing that he was nothing but an old-fashioned bore.