Mission: college p1 - College Campus Life for Veterans - Military Times EDGE

For former Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Erick Toribio, making the transition from sailor to student was a huge culture shock.

“I spent eight years in the military, with our own language, our own culture … [our] own way of thinking,” said the 29-year-old criminal justice major at Montgomery College in Rockville, Md. “In the military, they kind of take care of you.”

After separating this past July, the former personnel specialist, who served aboard carriers in Middle Eastern combat zones, found the prospect of college more daunting than anything he had experienced in uniform. Uncertain about everything from the college application process to which GI Bill benefits would be best for him, Toribio was trying to navigate the confusing waters of higher education while also looking for a full-time civilian job and helping his wife take care of their three children.

“It was a lot of stuff,” he said.

Indeed, the amount of stuff they have to deal with strikes fear in the hearts of many student service members and veterans, said Rose Sachs, coordinator for Montgomery College’s Combat2College program, which Toribio credits with helping him find his footing, both academically and socially, at school.

“It’s a new experience, and they are scared,” Sachs said. “I think they are also afraid to ask for help.”

With the Post-9/11 GI Bill boosting the number of student veterans attending college, many schools are working to remedy common barriers — emotional, physical and institutional — to their success.

Emotional challenges

Some of the challenges veterans face are similar to those faced by many nontraditional college students, said Andrew Rendon, director of the G.V. “Sonny” Montgomery Center for America’s Veterans at Mississippi State University.

“They are older. They have a different focus than younger students have,” said Rendon, who is also a major in the Army National Guard. And, like Toribio, they have competing interests — such as jobs, spouses and children — to which they must devote attention and resources.

Perhaps the most challenging issues, however, are unique to those who have served.

“A huge one is a lot of these people are coming out of a combat environment without the ability to retune their expectations,” Rendon said. “[The military trains] them to go to combat, to be aggressive, to respond to violence violently. To retune is sometimes very difficult.”

For such service members and veterans, it can be very difficult to develop a sense of safety on campus, according to the Counseling and Student Development Center at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va.

Even something as seemingly benign as sitting in a confined classroom full of students turns into a challenge, Rendon said.

Those who have spent time in a combat environment may have a much different world view than typical college undergraduates, said Matthew Nichols, student veterans services coordinator with UCLA’s Counseling and Psychological Services.

“Oftentimes, what might be life or death to a student right out of high school is certainly not life or death to a veteran,” he said. “It’s pretty easy to get frustrated with people complaining about things when the vet is just happy to be back and safe.”

Get your head in the right place

Physical challenges

Post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury and other combat-related disabilities also can affect attention and concentration, or make student veterans and service members feel anxious or uncomfortable, experts said. Too often, Sachs said, these students are reluctant to tell classmates, faculty and staff they have a problem. Other times, Nichols added, the student might not realize there is a problem.

“You don’t have to have been actually wounded or injured, but if you were near a blast or an [improvised explosive device] explosion, you could have TBI,” he said.

Institutional challenges

From an institutional standpoint, service members and veterans like Toribio are sometimes confused about what needs to be done — or when or where — in order to get accepted to a school, complete the registration process and receive the financial benefits to which they are entitled, Sachs said.

“I have heard from vets, ‘When I was in the service, everything was done for me,’” she said.

Now, they find themselves having to make many decisions in a new and unfamiliar setting. Indeed, “While the potential consequences of a combat soldier's decisions are staggering, the total number of autonomous daily decisions is quite small when compared to college life,” JMU’s Counseling and Student Development Center points out on its Web site.

If these students don’t feel like help is available, “then the first thing that goes wrong, they decide they don’t belong there,” Sachs said.

On the other end of the spectrum, military students can also struggle with the temptation to overachieve.

Sachs recalls dissuading one Combat2College student with no previous college experience who wanted to enroll in Montgomery College’s winter session — the equivalent of 16 weeks of classes condensed to three weeks. Military students at Mississippi State routinely have to be talked down from registering for 18 credit hours in their first semester and joining multiple student clubs and organizations, Rendon said.

“We really try to identify those who are chomping hard at the bit and ... pull the reins back a bit,” he said.

Now in his second semester at Montgomery College, Toribio is taking three classes, working full-time as a civilian at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., and helping his wife and mother-in-law with the kids. And while there are times he still feels overwhelmed and out of place on campus, he says he always knows where to turn for advice and help.

Combat2College “has been really outstanding,” he said. “They are angels. I’ll tell you that much.”

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