An Airborne NCO’s View from Yale
You’re not going to fit in on campus.
So what? You’re an adult and a former soldier, sailor, airman or marine aren’t you? A disciplined, tough, worldly young leader who has personally borne the burdens of our nation’s decade plus of conflict, now returning to civilian life to pursue the education, career, and life that you justly deserve.
It is likely you’re a member of the millennial generation, but not of your generation. I know when I first heard of Facebook in 2009, it seemed useless to me, and I didn’t have a profile of my own until 2011, when my sister made one for me. Only now do I realize that it is not useless, but an ingenious way for Mark Zuckerberg and other sundry characters, corporations, and governments to collect information on us all. So, being a bit of a modernity skeptic in addition to a vet, and a former infantryman at that, I harbored no illusions as to my place within the social milieu of the undergraduate community upon my return to school.
Big deal. I did not return to school with the intention to reclaim some sort of carefree college experience I had missed, but to further myself and my career aspirations, which I am certainly succeeding in doing. I would highly suggest to any other veteran returning to school to embrace a similar mindset, and not be put off course from furthering their own lives because they feel like they’re not part of the in crowd on campus.
Here’s the thing I feel is often not mentioned about college, especially in relation to non-traditional students: your college experience is yours to do with as you please. Just as college is sometimes pitched to high school students as an opportunity to reinvent themselves and live independently, this also applies to veterans, if in a slightly different manner. Outside of class, think of what else you would like to pursue. You’ll have a lot of free time on your hands, and if you don’t have to work or have a family to deal with, studying will not take up all of your time. Figure out what you want to do, you shouldn’t need help with that. Your life is your own again.
In any case, a veteran’s interactions with classmates will not be anymore awkward or strained than with anybody else, provided they are not made so. Yeah, we can at times be touchy or heatedly political, but just remember that campus politics are meaningless, and cut your classmates some slack; they really are just out of high school. The military is a youth driven organization, so it is not as though vets are not used to dealing with the 18-22 crowd, and veterans are likely not too far removed from that demographic themselves. At 28, I’m mentally a world apart from my classmates with my experiences, but chronologically there is not too much of a difference. Neither are they simply a bunch of annoying kids. Of course, some fall into that category, but many are also intelligent, well spoken, curious types who may not be as experienced (and jaded) as I am, but this is normal. No one is going to demean veterans, and if anything they are probably more likely to be concerned that vets will look down on or ignore them. As a vet, when you do choose to engage with them, which will happen, provided that you are not an absolute misanthrope, you may be surprised at their reactions to you. This is not the Vietnam era, vets are not hated on campus, and the reactions I have received to being a veteran generally been very positive, and at worst neutral. This extends to my interaction with faculty members, and while there may be the outliers who resent vets, they will be few and far between. I have personally not met a single openly or passive aggressively hostile professor, though it is possible they exist.
Campuses do tend to be liberal places, which is not exactly breaking news, but don’t be misled by our poisonous culture wars into thinking that they are openly hostile to you, or that there is a need to argue with and personally dislike people who don’t hold the same views as you. I lean libertarian myself, and admittedly hear a lot around campus that I think runs the gamut from erroneous to utter bullshit, but that’s life. No one is forcing their views down my throat, and I’m well past the point of being goaded into useless political arguments or susceptible to indoctrination or smooth talk from professors, politicians, garbage mass media, Super Bowl commercials, or targeted Google ads, so it’s no skin off my back. If you’ve been around a bit, which most of us have, you know most of it is nonsense anyway.
School is not that big of a deal, which is why it is school and not work, or war, or normal life. It’s what many people do prior to, and in preparation for, full time work and should be nothing but gravy to a former serviceman. Relax, take it by the numbers, don’t stop hitting PT hard or start doing it if you never did (you know who you are), and don’t forget where you came from. This was not meant to be a piece on changing who you are, but simply to try putting things in perspective and encouraging those who needed it to put aside preconceived notions of what college is. It is yours to make of it what you will; become a hardcore academic or date sorority girls, play intermural rugby or just show up to campus for class and go on to do your own thing otherwise, it’s up to you.
College will bore you at times. One of the reasons many of us went into the service after high school is that we did not care to spend anymore time sitting in a classroom, which is something you most assuredly will do when you go to college. Sometimes the subject matter of your classes will be very interesting, and other times the professor will make the subject matter interesting with their passion and knowledge of the topic, or simply are entertaining. But often, especially early on in your general education classes, you’ll feel like you’re in high school round 2. And of course, college will not compare with the adventure and camaraderie of the military, especially for us infantry types. Realize this from the get go, and be ready to stick it out, there’s no way around it.
As veterans, and especially combat vets, we’ve been out of the bubble that is modern American life. Personally, I’ll never totally assimilate back in with our culture, and I don’t want to. You’re all free to do as you please, but I would strongly advise that you not get too caught up in the notion of “fitting in” or “reassimilating”. They’re illusions created by our modern culture that will hamper your ability to move forward in life if you decide to chase some ephemeral goal that is little more than conformity. The Greatest Generation got on with their lives, and I sure as hell have no doubt that my grandfather, an artillery first sergeant at the Battle of the Bulge and the other, a grunt at Guadalcanal, saw more shit than I, or virtually any of us, did. If they and thousands like them did it, we can. Suck it up and drive on. The rest of your life is waiting.
**Zachary McDonald, a former paratrooper and sergeant in the 82nd Airborne Division, is a veteran of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. A recipient of the Combat Infantryman’s Badge and Purple Heart, he now studies at Yale University.
