How Service to School Changed a Family’s Life
My husband’s decision to reach out to Service to School changed my family’s life…. for the better. After deciding to go back to school, he began searching for colleges and programs to help veterans go to college. Thankfully, he found Service to School and chose to schedule a meeting. We had no idea then that a conversation with Jim Selbe at Service to School would change our lives forever and start our family down the path to an Ivy League education.
I would be lying if I said that the path to college was easy. Instead, I am here to say that it is hard, but it is rewarding and it is life changing for everyone.
I have been married to my husband for 17 years. As the wife of a Marine, I have been through countless deployments and training exercises. Though those were unpredictable- in their own way - they were our “normal.” I learned to live without my husband and love him from a distance. I learned to take care of our household, raise our children, work, attend school, and do just about everything without him. What once was scary became easy. You know what was scarier than all of that? Leaving the military and facing the unknown. Especially when that unknown was my husband becoming a student at 38. The decision to return to school after military service is not an easy one to make, add a partner and children into that decision process and it can seem like an impossible one. Our family is proof that it is not impossible, it can be done. It just takes perseverance to make it through.
This was not an easy transition in many ways, but it was made easier by the fact that he started at our local community college before transferring to Princeton. It gave him time to transition to civilian life and prioritize our family. For the first time, he had the ability to mold his schedule to ours. He did school drop-offs and pick-ups. He attended soccer games, school events, dentists, and date nights. While the transition was not easy, being a present father made it easier.
After community college, it was time to think about his next steps. For that, he turned to Service to School and Warrior Scholar Project. It was these organizations that really turned our fate around and changed our trajectory forever. He attended a Warrior Scholar at Columbia University and realized that he wanted to push himself further than just the local college. He wanted more. It did not take much for him to convince me of the same- I always knew he had untapped potential. So, with that, he worked with Service to School to begin exploring more competitive universities, degree fields, and application requirements. We look back at these applications and laugh at the essay questions posed to a 38-year-old veteran like: Write a letter to your future roommate and What is your favorite word and why? (I bet they weren’t expecting his response!) Not a single essay question gave him the space to explain the breadth of his career in the military. We were so thankful for the VetLink addendum. It gave him the opportunity to explain it all. We truly believe that it was the key to him getting into each amazing school!
My husband’s first question to me after receiving all his acceptance letters was: “Where do you want to go?” For the first time, we had options. And for the first time, I got to have input into where we were going to move! As we began exploring campuses and surrounding areas, we began to learn our true priorities in life: our children. We would only choose a school that would work best for our kids. At no point during this process did we want our children to sacrifice for our dreams. So instead of looking at which school was best for my husband (no matter what, he would receive a world class education), we looked at which schools were the best fit for our family. With that, we chose Princeton.
Choosing Princeton was the easy part, making major life changes to go to Princeton was not. We went from owning a three-bedroom home on an acre of land, to a tiny three-bedroom apartment on campus. Which, in our thirties, was a drastic change for us and felt like a step back. But if the military lifestyle taught me anything: We will figure it out, make the best of it, and always find the positive…. like new furniture!
However, what I did not anticipate was that moving to Princeton would change my life and my trajectory. I thought I would continue to be a high school and community college math instructor, but it was experiencing others like us reaching for their dream schools and careers that prompted me to want to change my own path. With the support of our community at Princeton, I applied to and got into my own Ivy league school. I returned to the classroom at 34 for my Masters of Higher Education at the University of Pennsylvania, knowing the group I wanted to work with in the future were service members and their families. I wanted other veterans and their families to have the same opportunities that we had and even more support in the process. I wanted to help them realize their true, untapped potential.
So, as much as UPenn allowed me, I studied and researched veterans in higher education and the types of supports available to them. My professors were amazingly supportive in my research and were happy to help and learn more about it themselves. My unique background and experiences were new to them and they were amazing at accommodating me. They were so accommodating in fact, that my children even joined me for my College Athletics and Higher Education: Money, Power, and Politics class with the amazing Dr. Karen Weaver, becoming two of the youngest UPenn GSE students! They didn’t just join my classes, occasionally they even sat in on Princeton classes and thesis writing sessions with my husband! They got to meet amazing professors and even go to school with the children of Princeton professors. Something they may never have experienced at other universities. We would walk the campus and talk to our children about the possibility of them attending one of these schools one day and getting to tell their future friends that they grew up on the very campus that they attend.
But like I said before, while I would like to say it was easy, it was not. My husband and I pushed ourselves to the limits, while always putting our children first. We had three calendars on our walls to track due dates and school schedules. To remember it all, I had to create google calendar alerts for EVERYTHING. We always made sure to attend parent-teacher conferences and school events. While also making mandatory family reading time at the end of the day and trying to have as many family dinners as possible. But we were not always perfect and sometimes we had to rely upon take out and chicken nuggets. We were honest with our children about what we were doing and, more importantly, why we were doing it. We showed them the importance of education and perseverance. That there is no age limit to anything and that they can do anything if they put their mind to it. Hopefully a life lesson that they will take into their own futures.
Who knows where we would be if we had decided that we were “too old” to go back to school or allowed any other of the litany of excuses to get in the way of our goals. Where would we be if my husband had decided to play it safe and go to a state school? What if he had not found Service to School? Seemingly innocuous decisions that changed the lives of our family forever.
Where are we now? We both graduated from Princeton and UPenn (I technically got my Ivy degree before my husband and will forever hold that over him!) and we are headed to Oxford University for two years. A pathway only made possible by his decision to attend Princeton and by supportive professors that believed he could do more and was worthy of more! And in true full-circle fashion, I now give back to other service members by working for Service to School and advising veterans.
While I could write another blog on the stress of this move, the challenges to make it happen, and the fear of the unknown; all that matters is that we are doing it and will not let the fear stop us - and neither should you.
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