Ask Dr. Ross
"Ask Dr. Ross" answers the important and nagging questions parents and potential college students raise about higher education. Topics include preparing for college, avoiding student debt, and secrets to good grades. Hosted by award-winning professor Catherine Ross, Ph.D., and student producer Ashley Worley, listeners can ask their own questions by emailing ADRquestions@gmail.com.
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Ask Dr. Ross
What is the College Experience Like for Veterans?
Veterans have some important decisions to make regarding their next steps after military service. Whether it's entering the workforce in a new field, returning to a university, or attending college for the first time, there's lots to navigate during this pivotal transition.
We're here to help.
This week, Dr. Ross and cohost Ashley Worley sit down with two veteran students to unpack the experience of going back to "the civilian world" after serving. Benjamin Broyles, who served six years in the Air Force, and Cody Vasquez, an English major who served four years in the Marine Corps, offer their perspectives on the topic. Besides sharing the resources available to veterans, Benjamin and Cody dive deep into their personal history, passion for learning, and life lessons from the military being applied to higher education. Whether you're an 18-year-old college freshman or a seasoned returning vet, their advice rings true.
Have questions about military life and college? Email us at ADRquestions@gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you!
Stay tuned to the Ask Dr Ross podcast. It's created to give you info to succeed at college. Our hosts are highly qualified. Dr Catherine Ross is a member of the University of Texas System's Academy of Distinguished Teachers. She's also a popular professor of 19th century English literature. Ask Dr Ross is a community service of the University of Texas at Tyler.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the second season of Ask Dr Ross with my new producer, ashley Worley. We're here today with two of our students who are veterans, cody Vasquez and Benjamin Broyles. We're going to ask you to introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about your service in our military, so I think we'll just go ahead and get started. Benjamin has been in longer, so we'll let you talk first.
Speaker 3:My name is Benjamin Broyles. I served in the United States Air Force for almost six years and I only recently got out, in April of this year.
Speaker 2:And tell us just a little bit about where you served and what sort of jobs you did.
Speaker 3:So I came in open mechanical without really knowing what job I was going to have, and I got assigned the job of an aerial porter. So to boil it down to a couple words, I loaded planes with people, with cargo, with anything that could go on a plane. So after graduating basic and technical training, my first duty station was Aviano in Italy. Spent about two years there, right at the beginning of COVID, so that was an interesting experience for sure. And then a year on a short tour down in Honduras and I got out after two years in Yokota, japan.
Speaker 2:Six years in the Air Force. All right, Cody Vasquez, tell us about yourself and your number of years of service.
Speaker 4:My name is Cody and I served with the United States Marine Corps for four years. Most all of my training was done in California. From there I went directly to Okinawa, japan, camp Hanson. I was there for almost three years. Originally I was supposed to be a field radio operator, but that all got changed. The actual contract that I went and started with was a 0651, which is all very fancy ways of just saying that we did stuff for computers.
Speaker 2:Now are you both small town boys. We'll start with you. Cody, are you a small town boy?
Speaker 4:So I did most of my growing up in Granbury, Texas, and that was a pretty big place. We had over 1,000 kids at the high school in my class. Towards the end of my high school career, right as I was about to start my senior year, we had to move a bit further west to a place called Abilene, Texas, which was way, way smaller. We were in a place called Merkle, which is like right outside of that, and our graduating class there was 63 students counting me. Huge change.
Speaker 2:So going from Granbury to Merkle to the US Marine Corps was that a lot of culture shock, a lot of change that you weren't prepared for.
Speaker 4:Yes and no. So when I was in Granbury at the high school there they had a Marine Corps JROTC program, which is a Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps program, and so I had a really solid introduction to the Marine Corps and the culture and kind of what it's about. But also, you know, I was a teenager very inexperienced in the world and so when I finally did go and enlist I was not prepared for a lot of the changes.
Speaker 2:We'll talk about some of those in a minute. Let's hear about Benjamin. How about you, small town boy?
Speaker 3:So I grew up right outside of Abilene, texas. So I always say Abilene because you know it's the biggest town nearby. But I actually grew up in a place called Elm Valley. It's not a real town or anything like that, it's just kind of an area out in the country. I was homeschooled my whole life up until I graduated high school and then I went on to college. I went to the community college in Abilene Cisco College and got my associates there.
Speaker 2:What was the jump from the community college to the Air Force like?
Speaker 3:I always say that you know I don't have a college experience now. I don't consider the need for it, because joining the military at 20, 21, you get the college experience. You live in dorms, you're surrounded by people from all over the place, so it's a very similar environment.
Speaker 2:That's interesting. Would you agree with him that living in the military is like a college experience?
Speaker 4:I don't know if I could really compare, because each branch has its own like inner culture, that the civilian world and everybody else they don't really get to see it or experience it. And so, in a sense, yes, because you're all, for the most part, very young people taking on this brand new path in life and you're all very close together. Like I said, in the barracks, right, but it's basically dorms, and so in a way, it's a community just like you would have here at the college dorms. But at the same time, what you're doing there is way different. Now that we're here, right, talking to people who went straight from high school into college, way, way different than talking to people that we served with, who were our age at that time.
Speaker 2:Tell me what are some of those big differences.
Speaker 4:Humor is a big one. Yeah, dark humor is pretty perpetual throughout the military. And when we were in the military, at least for me, everything was very natural. It was very easy to talk to people and, like, find a common ground and build some camaraderie, even if they're total strangers. Right, and I think it was because we had the unifying background of oh, we've enlisted or, you know, we're in the military now, but you know, out here in the civilian world, a total stranger is a total stranger. It's hit or miss whether you're going to have something in common with them that's really true.
Speaker 2:Has this been your experience too, benjamin?
Speaker 3:oh, absolutely, yeah. Yeah, especially, you were kind of in one spot, right. You stayed in okinawa the whole time, but I jumped around a lot and it was just me moving. So I got to go assimilate with a new environment and a new group of people. But it's always fairly easy to do so because, especially if you have the same career field, and then you find out very quickly how small the world is in terms of, oh, you know this person, oh, I know that person, you know, I worked with them here, I worked with them there, I went to tech school with them. So there's always an immediate common ground.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I'm an army brat and I had the same experience. I went to 12 different schools before I graduated from high school and as long as I was in a school on an army base where everybody else was military kids, we instantly had that in common and we also knew we had to make friends fast because we didn't know how long we'd be there, and I found that that actually helped me a lot later on when I got out, as you say, in the civilian world, in that I knew how to start to make friends. But I also agree with you there's a coolness that's different. So you started out with community college. You had that in mind, but then you went straight into the Air Force, you went straight into the Marine Corps. So did you anticipate ever going to college before you got into the Marine Corps?
Speaker 4:It wasn't necessarily so cut and dry. When I graduated high school, the situation that we were in. I felt obligated to stay and enter the workforce so that I could help out my parents because we had a lot going on at the time. I worked at a small grocery store that opened and closed like five times. While I was there my whole thing was just buying groceries or paying for the electric bill or the water bill whenever I could and that sort of thing. I did want to go to college but it didn't seem like a reality. But I also wanted to serve in the military, especially the Marine Corps. I was all about that. It was a big dream of mine.
Speaker 2:And you'd been in that junior ROTC for a while, so you already had some idea. Was that in the high school in Granbury? Is that how you found out about it? Mm-hmm. So they reached out to you as a young man, like in ninth or tenth grade.
Speaker 4:Yeah, ninth grade. Well, actually they did a presentation for us in the middle school that I was at in Granbury. The instructors for the program came down and they explained what it is and what it's about, and ever since then I wanted to enlist, but once I graduated I was of the mind I'll have time for that stuff later. And then, before I even knew it, two years had gone by. It wasn't until a buddy of mine that I met in Merkle came over to my house one day and he said hey, I'm about to go train up at the recruiting office because he wanted to be a Marine as well. And he said you can come with me and you can sit down. You don't have to sign any papers or anything. I said let's go. So I went there, met the recruiters and I'll tell you, if it hadn't been for him, I probably would still be there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I owe that guy literally my whole life, and from what you've told me, the military, the Marine Corps, was a whole new vista for you. It taught you all sorts of things. I mean, you grew up, you said you got challenged. You said Also, though it seems as though you realized how much more you could do. You want to talk about that a little bit?
Speaker 4:Sure, I mean, you know, like I said, my concerns were very immediate right out of high school, and so the rest of the world was kind of a closed oyster. But then you get into the military and you know, like Benjamin said, the world is really small but your impact can be as big as you want to make it Right. And this idea that even in the small actions in your day-to-day they can have a profound impact on the world and the situation around you. And so, being a part of that experience, you know, realizing it's not just me and the rest of the world right, I'm a part of this thing. Right, I'm a cause for effects yeah, that really opened my eyes.
Speaker 4:And so it took me a very long time to sort of absorb and synthesize that right consciously, because you know, when you're in you're really just worried about today and the next day. But once I got out I knew that just doing like a day-to-day, like that job I had at the grocery store, that wasn't going to be something that I could do and be satisfied with. I knew I needed to really invest myself and see what I was capable of achieving and, you know, causing in the world. Right, because I didn't want to just be part of the landscape.
Speaker 2:So the Marine Corps really was a way out for you and a way on up. How about you, Benjamin? What moved you from the community college instead of on to the four-year college, you went on to the Air Force. What was that reasoning?
Speaker 3:So I started out in the industrial technology side of the community college. They had several courses and certificates you could get in terms of HVAC and similar, because I've always been more of a manual labor person. I was intelligent enough to get by. I wasn't stupid, but I liked to use my hands and I thought I could use my body in a positive way. So I ended up getting at my associates in automotive technology because I thought cars were interesting.
Speaker 3:It was a big puzzle you got to figure out and after I graduated with that I realized, oh, this is essentially worthless. You can only start out at the bottom in most mechanical areas. The idea of making $7.25 an hour working at a Jiffy Lube did not appeal to me at all. So that last semester, as I was going through, I was like what can I do better? I had many men in the church family who were military considering Dias Air Force Base is out there in Abilene that I took inspiration from and decided to go ahead and go through with it. It was one of the fastest decisions I'd ever made. Honestly, you know, looking at your options like, if I don't like this, I've signed a four-year contract, I get out and go to school for free. You know, no harm, no foul. If I do like it, I get to retire in 20 years. There's a lot of options available there, so that was the route I ended up going.
Speaker 2:So the recruiters talk a pretty good game, it sounds like.
Speaker 4:Oh, they're smooth with it.
Speaker 3:It might have been for you, but in Abilene, with the Air Force recruiter there, they barely have to go outside and look. People come strolling into their office constantly. I think partially because the base was there and people knew people who were in and everybody that was in a different branch that you would talk to would be like oh, if you're going to Drongo Air Force, you know the quality of life is considered to be significantly better.
Speaker 4:Oh man way better.
Speaker 2:Way better. Oh boy, Well, we'll have to hear about why is it so way better?
Speaker 3:Well, at a base level. It's that there's certain requirements set by the higher-ups in the Air Force that are very, very different, like I stayed in hotels when I had to go on trips, work trips.
Speaker 2:As opposed to what Barracks Tents, tents oh.
Speaker 3:Yeah, which isn't to say that everybody in the Air Force had that, but it was significantly better in that way. You know, as an E3 with a year in, I get to move off base into an apartment all by myself. That's very different.
Speaker 4:Yeah, pretty much. If you're not married, you're in the barracks and you've got at least one roommate all the way up until E5 sergeant's level. But most people would just if they couldn't find a way to hack it in the barracks life, then they would just get married.
Speaker 2:Oh, how terrible. What a terrible reason to get married, huh.
Speaker 4:People kept telling them, but it still happens.
Speaker 2:Well, so you were only in for four years, and that was your contract. And then you were in for four, and then you stayed on for two more years. What was happening here to make you think, hey, I might go to a four-year college, cody.
Speaker 4:As Benjamin mentioned, you know you sign your contract and after the first four years if you don't enjoy it, then you can leave right and it's no harm, no foul, as long as you serve honorably. We've talked about this before. I became pretty disillusioned with the reality of military life, but I don't necessarily think that it was just oh, the military is awful and I don't want to do this anymore. I think I was a bit young and naive for it. I think that contributed a lot, but I decided it wasn't for me anymore and I decided that there was other stuff that I could do that would be more productive, more effective, more valuable.
Speaker 2:When did you find out about what a deal it was?
Speaker 4:as far as the military helping to pay for your university. Oh, we know right away. That's one of the main selling points that recruiters use is like do you want to get paid to go to school or do you want to take a $100,000 loan?
Speaker 2:Why don't you spell out for the audience just there's the Hazelwood Act, there's also the GI Bill, there's also tuition assistance. When you're inside, you want to kind of briefly tell us a little bit about how all that works, because you know there are a lot of folks around here who don't have that kind of support for their education.
Speaker 4:Sure, well, so I'm using the Hazelwood Act, which is for Texans only, right, yes. And then I'm using Chapter 31, which is pretty much the same thing as the GI Bill. There's a lot of technical terminology and it all kind of amounts to the same thing, which is you get paid to go to school, right, it's just a difference of how the finances get executed.
Speaker 2:Now do they pay tuition and room and board, or is it just tuition?
Speaker 4:Well, the tuition on all options is taken care of, but as far as room and board goes, there's something called a BAH I think it stands for Base Allowance for Housing but that's like a stipend or a monetary award that you get and that's supposed to help you offset your costs for books, traveling, for classes.
Speaker 2:Is that after you leave or during the time when you're in the military?
Speaker 4:That's all after you leave. Yeah, while you're in, it's mainly tuition assistance that people use, usually in concert with, like, the FAFSA.
Speaker 2:Do you have time when you're in the military to go to college?
Speaker 4:It really depends.
Speaker 3:It depends on you as a person what you're looking for, because I know a lot of people that knew about the tuition assistance and their goal was I'm going to do four years and I'm going to get my bachelor's while I'm in, but you have to be signed off on the ability to use a tuition assistant. So depending on how you're performing at work can directly affect that. So if you're lacking because of you know you're taking too many classes, then it could become a problem.
Speaker 2:Well, and just speaking as a professor, I find that when students have too many things going on in their lives, it's harder for them to do the kind of in-depth work I'd like to have them be doing. So for you. You stayed on for two more years. You were still thinking you might stick it out. Is that the idea?
Speaker 3:Well, so I got injured after about a year of being in. It wasn't anything more related or anything, it was something stupid. But I hurt my knee pretty bad and then dealing with that during COVID and getting surgery on that. It took about two years to get to a point where I could walk normally again.
Speaker 2:Were you getting good medical care through the military?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, that's a, that's a deep. That's a tough question to answer.
Speaker 4:It's one of those common threads that everybody in the military deals with as far as, like, medical care, complain about it a lot. Well, it's not even really complaints, it's just the experiences that people have. You know, I don't know how it was for you, but I also injured my knee and for a month they said, oh, you just sprained it. Here's some crutches, so some Motrin water, change your socks. That's a big joke. But yeah, for a month I didn't get better. In fact I got worse.
Speaker 4:It got to the point where, like, I was getting so stiff that I couldn't even flex my knee at all. And they finally sent me in for, uh, an MRI, I think. And they figured out, oh, he's torn his medial meniscus, which is that tendon that runs down along the inside of your knee. But yeah, it took them a month to realize that. And then when I spoke to a physical therapist or the physician, he said, listen, because you've had this injury for so long and we're just now going to get you into surgery to get it fixed. You could be looking at early onset arthritis in this knee as early as 30, which I'll be 28 this month. But yeah, medical care in the military is kind of a hot button issue. People talk about it all the time.
Speaker 3:Inside of the continental United States it can be a little bit better. But when you're overseas and your only option is what you got, you know you've got one orthopedic doctor, you've got one physical therapist, you know. So you don't get multiple choices, you don't get to figure it out. You get told this is what it is. So, especially at like 21, 22, I don't know anything about going to the doctor. I've never been to the doctor before in my life.
Speaker 2:And probably when you did it was with your mom and dad, right, yeah, sure, I understand that completely. So both of you then found you had really good benefits to get to college and you decided to go ahead. You got a little disillusioned. You'd gotten injured, you'd had some time, so why'd you pick UT Tyler?
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's funny, I did a few college tours before I came here. I went and did a tour at West Baptist University, west Texas, a&m, and one more that I can't remember the name of right now. But when I came here there was a few factors. First of all, campus is probably the most beautiful one that I've been to in all these tours, so I really like the location and just what they have going on here. But also I've got one friend who lives probably two and a half three hours just over the border into Louisiana and I served with him when I was in Japan. And I've got a couple other friends.
Speaker 4:Once they get retired and moved back to the States, this is the area they'll be coming back to. So probably in the next couple years I'll have a nice little network of people that I've served with already. But also I did a suit camp here, which is the freshman orientation, and that really sealed the deal for me, the students here and the faculty and the kind of kind of the culture that they had within the campus. It seemed very conducive to the kinds of things that I wanted to do. You know, I want to be part of a strong, healthy community. I want to lead. I want to teach others how to lead. All this good stuff.
Speaker 2:In fact, one of the things I do want to talk with both of you about is your leadership training and how that's factored into your daily experience with the younger students here. But let's hear before we get back to that. What about you? Why'd you pick UT Tyler?
Speaker 3:I was tired of Abilene. I've seen a lot of what that area has to offer. Just as a benefit of being homeschooled, I got to explore that county and that area very well and Abilene is the biggest city until you get to like Fort Worth, you know. So I grew up there, you know 21 years there and then did my tours and I was trying to decide what to do and I've got friends who live in Longview that I've been friends with since I was an early teenager from church camp and I've never had a chance to live nearby them and we've maintained our friendship for this entire period and they've been very good to me and I wanted to live nearby them and I'm about five hours away from home so I can go back and see my family. That was really the kicker, if I'm being honest.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, but the common thread here is that both of you had friends, so you knew you wouldn't be completely alone, although in some ways, going off to college is kind of about getting away, although you had already gotten away for six years in your case, benjamin, and four in yours, so the Swoop Camp worked for you In your case. You just showed up one day, I guess, huh. So what are you majoring in, benjamin?
Speaker 3:I'm switching it up because I started out with the idea of going computer science and doing something in that realm because I really didn't know what I was going to do. I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. Is what I say.
Speaker 2:And you know what that's. Part of what the college experience is about is helping you figure out that, and so don't be ashamed of it. Lots of folks, including I, had three different majors before I got finished with college.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I'm switching to the accelerated BAS of business occupations, because I came in with 80-something credit hours already.
Speaker 2:Which is, if it's a 120-something hour program, then you're more than halfway past, aren't you?
Speaker 3:Correct. Yes, so the idea is now to go ahead and just knock out this bachelor's as a stepping stone, and I'll still have GI Bill left, so then I can go on to a master's of something in today's world that's almost more effective than a bachelor's right.
Speaker 2:And one of the things that we're learning, too, is just about what AI is doing to sort of change so much of the work picture. I guess that one of the most important things we're talking about right now that people are going to need is what we call soft skills critical thinking, communication, ethical thinking, logical thinking, managing human words and human situations and I would imagine that the military helped you with some of that too just things that had to do with just getting along with the world and making good decisions. So you're not sure about a major yet, but you're kind of thinking about it, and now I know what your major is, cody. Tell us about it.
Speaker 4:You know I've always been a very heavy reader and very interested in the English subject. You know a lot of my English teachers growing up left very good impressions on me and so it's always kind of been the field that I've felt most comfortable in most natural kind of connection with the relationships with other people right and the networking with the community.
Speaker 2:Well, and literature is about humans, isn't it? It's stories. It's stories about the way people do stuff with each other, or against each other, or for each other.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, that's what all of life is about is just people telling each other stories, right, and the degree to which you can do that effectively greatly alters the degree to which you experience the world.
Speaker 2:You know, I have students who have been nurses, for example, who liked literature, and I said why don't you minor in English and see what you think? And they come back and say you know, dr Ross, we learned how to see details in a way that we haven't. In fact, one of my students who just today, she said I'm doing better in my other classes because of English, I said tell me about it. She said well, I know what to look for better and I know how to ask better questions. I'm going yes, yes, yes, but now, cody, you want to do English for a specific reason, don't you?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'm going to be a high school English teacher here in Texas.
Speaker 2:Tell us about that. What made you want to be that?
Speaker 4:Well again, you know, my English teachers were just phenomenal, and I think it's the single occupation where I'll be the most effective and the most valuable that I possibly can be. The reason I even took an interest in being a teacher, though, is, well, number one. There's been a lot of talk, especially over like the last five, 10 years here in Texas at least, there's been a kind of a sharp decline right In the general quality of education and the effectiveness. You know, I was just talking to one of the guys in my art class, my art history class. He said that the majority of his graduating class, which just graduated three, four months ago, he said the majority of them cannot read, or at least not at a 12th grade level. He said they read like middle schoolers.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, there's an article in Atlantic right now I think it's Atlantic about how high school students can't read novels and they haven't been being trained to do it, partly because they're long but also because you can't test as well. And it's a very interesting article about just how few classes now in high schools will teach a whole novel, much less two or three. They'll do highlighted passages and they'll sort of frame it. People's attention spans have gotten shorter and shorter and they just can't do it and it's really troubling.
Speaker 2:Of course it's music to my ears to hear you say that you had some good English teachers and that made you want in some ways to emulate them. But it's even more music to my ears to hear you say that you want to teach kids. You know, because it's not always been the most popular of options. And yet right now, of all the things I can think of to do, it seems to me like it may be one of the most important, because you're not just about feeding yourself or advancing your own personal finances or whatever. You're going to be given something back your training in the military. Talk about how you think the leadership training you've gotten there is going to affect your classroom behavior.
Speaker 4:This is kind of a major theme that I've noticed is that people don't really learn if it's too easy, like if somebody just holds their hand out long enough. Eventually, whatever it is that they want or need is going to be handed to them. If you make it to where something is difficult but doable or possible and you show young people that not only could they do something that's difficult, they should right, because the more you do that, the easier it becomes to do difficult things. And you can apply this to every concept of life, right, not just English and the language arts, but math, mechanics, technology, talking with people, forming relationships, self-discipline, maturity, spirituality all of this stuff. It'll never be done right now and in some cases, like self-discipline, right, you can never master that. The valuable portion is that process. We talked about metacognition, right, which is thinking about the way that you think, and if you can refine and improve your ability to just think and to grasp knowledge, you get compounding returns. It's one of those parabolas that goes straight up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I remember the first time I had some experience like that in high school. I don't want to at all cut down my four different high schools, but I remember the first time in a freshman English class I was actually a pre-med major originally and I just remember reading a poem and seeing how much more was in it than I thought and I thought it was just as a little, you know, just words on a page. And then I saw there were these ideas and these connections to other words on other pages and that they were about feelings that I'd had and that I hadn't always understood and it just pinged. It opened something. That moment when you realize, oh, there's so much to learn in college.
Speaker 2:Loving learning is the key. And I worry, I must say you know that one of my biggest concerns about some of my students is some of them don't seem to care about learning much. They're just kind of here going through the motions and getting a credential to get on, to make some money. And you know, I could tell when you were in my class, even the very first week or two, that you really cared about learning. And I'm not trying to leave you out of this conversation at all, benjamin, but something fired you up to want to learn, and one of the things that I'm curious about is what it was.
Speaker 4:Oh, I mean, it's kind of just that general. You know very deep knowledge that life is very short, very precious. The time that you have is constantly bleeding away from you, right? And there's this kind of illusory belief that young people have that like, oh, I got time for that later on, right, but now, now is the time, here is the place. The future is not real the same way that now is real. The person that you're going to be is not the kind of real that the person you are right now is. The choices that you make now will define the person that you become. That's how it works.
Speaker 2:And if you're not in the moment, you're not making the best decisions you can make. Either are you.
Speaker 4:Well, you're not even really making decisions, you're letting the world happen to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, flowing along, yeah. So, Benjamin, what about you? When you started taking college classes here, did it fire up something for you, or sounds like you were just kind of ready to get out?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm still working on what I want to do. I don't have that defined goal, which I've seen in a lot of my friends and peers, as well as the ability to lock in on something and be like this is what I'm going to do. You know, I've got a buddy who's got an unmanned aerial services degree.
Speaker 2:Like is that drones? Okay, drones. I was going to say uh-huh.
Speaker 3:And he locked in on that and went through with it and that's his passion and that's what he loves. And it's fascinating to see, because I don't have I've never had that. I've explored a lot of options and been like, what can I do? And again I always thought I was suited for manual labor. So I was like I can try and figure something else out, but we're still trying to.
Speaker 2:But obviously you're in college and you're doing well enough to still be doing more than just manual labor, right?
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, I mean I have to because I am broken in a lot of ways. These are things that I can't do anymore. You know, I'm 27. I'm not married, I don't have kids, but my goal is to be a father and a husband and I want to be able to get on the ground and play with my children. I'm already struggling to do that. So, you know, it's like let's ease up a little bit and use this muscle up here instead of you know the other ones. So we move forward and see what happens.
Speaker 2:Well, let me ask you this so you did your community college years, and usually those are the ones that are sort of the survey classes. You have a little bit of English, a little bit of history, a little bit of political science, a little bit of math, a little bit of all the different things, and the idea of that is the core curriculum is to give you a sense of what's out there so that you can pick and you can figure it out. That didn't apparently nothing clarified yet for you.
Speaker 3:Is that correct? I can't say there's anything in particular. I have a little bit of interest in everything I say. I always been a jack-of-all-trades where I put 80 80 towards something and usually that's enough, right, so I can be decent at a lot of things and that's kind of how it's always been. There's nothing that piques my interest to the point that I want to get involved and stay in it.
Speaker 2:Now, when you were homeschooled, though, were there things that you did, that you said something about, how you spent a lot of time exploring the countryside around Abilene.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I spent a lot of time outside. My other form of entertainment was always books. I spent hours. I would go to the library and come back with 15 every week. So I read a lot, but writing didn't really appeal to me. I think I'm pretty good at writing. I think it's the best way I have to express myself is through my writing, but I don't have an interest in making that a.
Speaker 2:Well, and you know what, it's damn hard and you know I've just finished publishing a book and it is a lot of work.
Speaker 2:Even though I'm an English professor, I don't always enjoy the writing process. It's a lot of work, it's hard work, but I think that one of the things we understand very clearly is that writing is a way of thinking and that it's not so much the final product we're worried about, so much as the process of getting to the final product Thinking through your ideas. You don't really know what you know until you start putting it on paper and seeing if it makes sense and realizing, oh, it doesn't make sense, but I think I can make it make sense. And reading to a peer and doing drafts and things like that. So what we know right now is that writing is increasingly going to be an important part of the work business because, although AI is going to do a lot of it for us, ai is going to be writing like a machine and we got to be better than the machine. So writing is going to be important. But in terms of how your classes are going, how long have you been at UT Tyler?
Speaker 3:This is my first semester.
Speaker 2:So you're just now starting to get a sense of it. You've been here for a year and a half now, cody, haven't you? This is my third semester, third semester, so how's it going?
Speaker 4:Surprisingly well. I'm doing a lot better than I thought I would. As far as like grades and just being on top of things. There's been like the natural challenges just trying to schedule time management and financials, things like this. It's all been kind of an adjustment period for definitely the first semester and then through the second semester as well, but now it's sort of gotten to the point where you know that stuff is pretty simple not necessarily easy, but pretty simple to deal with.
Speaker 2:There's just a lot of hoops you've got to jump through, aren't there? You know, getting your major, getting your minor, getting the right number of hours doing all this sort of stuff, huh, what else?
Speaker 4:When you first start the process there's a whole lot of red tape and administrative stuff to get through, but lot of red tape and administrative stuff to get through.
Speaker 4:But in subsequent semesters, especially for things like financial aid and this sort of stuff, it almost gets to a point where it's automated, like there's still stuff that you have to do, but it's not as bad as it was in the beginning. But now it's just really knuckling down and getting deep into the material that we're studying and things like this. I just registered for my next semester's classes and we've talked a little bit about how there's still core requirements for universities, which I'm not a fan of, but I mean it is what it is. As far as the rest of it goes, I'm having a pretty good time and I think over the course of my next two and a half semesters it's probably only going to get better here. In the beginning it's been the required classes and the very intro-level stuff, but I think once I start getting into the more complex and the more involved material and stuff, Well, by this coming semester you should be ready to start taking your heavy-duty English major classes, right?
Speaker 2:So you'll take the introduction to the major, which is the 3308 course, and then you get to take American or British or earlier Shakespeare. We have technical writing classes as well, and digital things, Things that, while you're going to be a high school English teacher, you always want to be thinking about what it is that you might have to be called upon to teach. But also, the other thing too is just learning from your teachers about how they teach. You know, I always tell my new colleagues teach the way your favorite professor taught and avoid at all costs the way your least favorite professor taught. You know, remember what annoyed the heck out of you and don't ever do that.
Speaker 3:That was a common theme when it came to leadership in the military. You know, hey, pay attention to your sergeants. You don't like and don't be like them, don't do what they did. And that's probably the most useful piece of advice that you get as you progress through is like hey, don't get mad at people for the drop of a hat, give some grace and be patient, especially knowing that these are kids that are coming in out of high school. I'm sure that's similar for professors. These are kids coming out of high school. They've got a lot of life to live.
Speaker 2:Similar for professors. These are kids coming out of high school. They've got a lot of life to live. Yeah, so you've just now finished what about 10, 11 weeks of class for the first time and you're 27 years old? How does it feel to be a 27-year-old college junior?
Speaker 3:Oh, it's interesting, it's difficult getting back into study mode because I tested for the Air Force at least. You test for every rank that you come up after E4. And so I had to take those tests and that was a certain type of studying I had to do. It was very particular and you know, hey, you're going into a multiple-choice test with 150 questions on it. So that was that particular type of studying and now I've got to get back into. No, I have to actually think this through. I don't just need to have the knowledge, I need to understand the concepts, which has always been difficult for me.
Speaker 2:I like to be able to apply. It gets better. You get practicing doing it. But you're right, If it's just the first time in a long time and you're used to just learning some facts and laying them down, this is a different level of cognitive exercise.
Speaker 3:That's why I'm excited to get to that point in my college career where I'm getting to that master's, because I feel like that is a in-depth, more technical in terms of you need to fully understand the concept. So right now I'm still taking core classes, you know, and I can get by pretty good without doing too much work, right.
Speaker 2:Well, the other thing, too, is that you know how to get the job done. You know how to get the reading done. You know you're probably more disciplined than a lot of your classmates. Have you noticed that already?
Speaker 3:Yeah, to some extent. But this is something that Cody and I have talked about is the stress is different, because when you're in the military it's manufactured, is what I call it manufactured stress. These deadlines are fake, you know, and it gets shorter every level it comes down. So you know you get asked to do something by tomorrow. The person above the person that asked you wants it done by the end of the week, and then so on and so forth. So every time you have a deadline it's not actually due and most of the time there's not much consequence for missing that deadline because there's still so much time.
Speaker 2:So you're saying that deadlines are stricter in college than they are in the military?
Speaker 3:Yeah, because it's a personal deadline. You're the only one responsible. So it's like hey, I understand what this deadline is and if your professor can give you some grace, if you're having other deadlines to meet as well, you know, I can talk to you as a person. When you're being commanded to do something at the risk of being punished for not doing it, then you get.
Speaker 4:oh you know, definitely a different experience In the Marine Corps. We had the 15 prior concept right, which is where any time that you had to be somewhere or doing something, you had to show up 15 minutes prior to the beginning of whatever that was. But that 15 prior applies at every link of the chain. So you've got your platoon commander, he tells the staff in COIC, staff in charge, he's like, hey, I want this done by this time. And he says good to go, sir, we'll have it done at least 15 minutes prior to that. And then he tells the next person down and so on and so forth. And by the time it gets to where I was at the E3, e4 level Lance Corporals and Corporals you're doing things days or weeks in advance and it's not necessarily because they need to be done like that, but it's because the order has been passed through so many channels and it is kind of like a redundancy to make sure to account for unforeseen obstacles and things like that.
Speaker 3:But at the same time, it shows that you have no trust in those below you, which was the toughest part for me, because I was good at my job. I knew what I was doing. So give me that extra time and be on the same level with me. Let's talk, you know, person to person. You're not having to tell me exactly what to do. I'm pretty good at this. Let me do my job.
Speaker 2:So do you feel like you're being allowed to do your job now here at UT Tyler?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it all depends on me. I'm not relying on anybody else to get something done. I don't, besides, like group projects, which has been interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, group projects. That's always a problem because we don't assign them properly. We ought to design a better way to create group projects, because I do think that when you learn how to work in a team which I'm sure is what you learned how to do in the military it's an important set of skills and increasingly we see, when employers come to us to tell us what it is they want from us, they say teamwork is right there at the top, and that's the single thing I think most high school and college students especially hate. So what about the social life in college? Is it what you expected? Is it different?
Speaker 3:I don't participate much. I'd rather go home and do some homework as opposed to especially driving to Longview. It's a 45-minute drive. I've got other stuff and I've got other priorities, you know.
Speaker 2:What are some of those priorities?
Speaker 3:Like I said, my friends are out there in Longview. They're some of my closest friends and they had a little girl fairly recently and I am Unky Ben and I'm having fun being Unky Ben and watching her grow and getting comfortable with the new church family, contributing there to the best of my ability and maintaining contact with other friends, because now you know, my friends are scattered across the globe. You know I got friends in Germany and Salt Lake Georgia. You know my friends are scattered across the globe. You know I've got friends in Germany and Salt Lake Georgia. You know, all over the place. So I'd like to maintain those relationships.
Speaker 2:I think you will. I think you will and I think having the college degree is going to help you moving forward. However, you end up deciding what you want to be when you grow up. It will give you more mobility than you think and in the meantime, it's great that you have friends around A lot of really good. What about you, Cody?
Speaker 4:It's way different. I'm 27 now. I'll be 28 this month. Most of my classmates and people around me are between the ages of 17 and 20. They haven't necessarily had the time to experience the world the way that I have, and so it's kind of hard to find common ground in that respect. Like outside of our classes together, these kids are talking about TikTok. They're talking about pop stars and celebrities and shows that they're watching.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I have a stepson who went back to college but he had the same feeling. He went back, he was 24 and he felt old. And in all the years I've been here, the students who come back come back because they want to be here. It's a choice, it's not just, oh, I'm supposed to do this, it's kind of the role of things and my parents want me to and da-da, and you all do so much better, so much better. You get your work done on time, you ask good questions, you can see when people are being silly, you recognize stuff. And I just love it when I have older students because I know I can count on you and I think certainly in the classes you've been in well, I guess you've only been in one class with me, cody, but you're a standard that they had to measure themselves to. But you also were very gracious with them. You didn't talk down to them. You all have an opportunity to be leaders in these classes. You were that. I mean, you were just naturally that, or maybe you'd learned how to be that way in the military and maybe it's because you want to be a teacher already. You kind of got that kind of vibe going.
Speaker 2:But one of the things I always want to say to anybody whether you're a veteran or someone older who wants to come back to college don't be afraid to be a little older. It actually gives you a great advantage. When I went back to grad school, I went back when I was 40. I talk about really old right and I had the same feeling. This was a PhD program. I had students, you know they were 32 and I was 40. It felt like miles apart of experience. My main people that I liked and am now good, close friends with are my professors, and I would encourage you to be close to your faculty because I know that we like you guys a lot and want you all to know how much we value you. If there are vets out there that think about coming to college, what's some advice you'd give them about what to expect, what to do, what not to do?
Speaker 4:For sure, for sure, for sure. Go to the Veterans Services Office and get your VA stuff in order. Even if you get assigned a 0% disability rating, right, it's still a rating and if anything comes up later on down the line, that'll be a much smoother process if you do that first Right, and doing that will kind of prime you for the process of doing your administration stuff, your financial aid stuff, especially when you get to the VSO, the Veteran Services Office. You do, you know, claims and stuff through them, and wherever you go there's probably a space somewhere on the campus that's specially designated for veterans, like here. We have the Military Veteran Success Center.
Speaker 4:That was where I met some of the first friends that I made here in Tyler and they're fantastic. So yeah, definitely do the VA stuff, regardless of how much you like or dislike the VA. Find other veterans at your campus. You don't have to be very good buddy-buddy with them, but just understand that they're out there and they're doing the same thing that you're doing. So at some point you're going to have to reach out to somebody and go. Hey, I just need to decompress and talk about the things I'm going through.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a stressful thing, even if you're 17 or 18. And I think sometimes people who are older think that maybe they're supposed to handle it better. But it's a different set of stressors, isn't it? What about you? Best advice to guys that are coming back or women who are coming back?
Speaker 3:It's not as hard as you think it is. I think there's a certain like oh, this is a real school, you know and I have had to, you know, change my manner of speaking in a lot of ways. But in terms of the classes, you know, this is not some scary person at the front of the room. You can go talk to the professor, you can have a conversation with them. If you're going through something and you need a little leniency, a lot of them will be like yeah, we can work together on this, but you're just dealing with people that have no, they're not an authority figure in the way that we're used to seeing authority figures.
Speaker 2:Ashley, I want you to chime in here. What are some of the thoughts you've had as you've listened to these gentlemen talk about their experience. You want to tell them a little bit about you, who you are and what you've been doing.
Speaker 5:Sure. First off, thank you for your service.
Speaker 3:Thank you for your support. Sure First off.
Speaker 5:Thank you for your service, thank you for your support. I'm interested to hear what kind of advice you might have for people who are just coming into college 18, 19. I'm 19 now and I'm majoring in mass communications, and are there things that you've learned that you would go back and tell your younger?
Speaker 4:self or that you would tell another young person at this point in your life For me it would definitely be there's going to be other parties. You don't need to go to every single party you hear about. You don't need to be doing a whole lot of this extracurricular stuff. Really, it's making peace with the fact that your time for messing around and not taking yourself seriously that time has kind of passed right, because now your decisions aren't necessarily confined to a high school or to your social group. Now you're an active agent in the world right, and, like we talked about earlier, it's up to you to define how effective you're going to be. So I'm not saying that you got to give 110% every single second of every single day, but you know, take it seriously. You are a person that is worth investing your time in.
Speaker 4:Jordan Peterson talks a lot about you have to think about yourself as if you were a person that you're responsible for taking care of. When you get the things that you have to get done accomplished right, you're going to find time for these other things, and it'll make it more special If you're at the end of a long week and you did everything you were supposed to do, all the homework's done, you know, and you've got a little bit of time, hit up a friend and be like hey, you know, I've got a couple hours to kill. Do you want to go see a movie? You want to get some food, and it'll be that much more important to you, and then that will help drive you through the next week, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 3:You build up momentum. That way you don't know everything. You really don't. You know next to nothing. In fact, it feels like you've lived a lot of life at that point, which from your perspective, you have.
Speaker 3:But listen to other people, observe other people. Observe not just like your professors, but observe the older people in your class and see how they're acting and how they react to things and take it seriously. They've lived some life, they've got some other experiences under their belt, and then go out and find some experiences of your own. It doesn't have to be the generic, you know teen, movie, college experience. You don't need to go out and go to parties and whatnot, but go find things that interest you and take some people along, and that way you'll build real friendships with these people, not superficial friendships. I believe in the importance of having a solid core group of friends, of people that you surround yourself with, and pay attention to the impact they have on you and the impact you have on them, and have that circle of influence and focus on those people and what you can do for them.
Speaker 3:and be, honest, just be honest. If you're struggling, tell somebody you're struggling.
Speaker 2:But you know one of the things that I observe as a professor and we'll start to wrap it up here but this is not a fully residential university where people come in as freshmen and stay four years and then leave, and increasingly that's the way a lot of people are. They come in with a number of hours already. Sometimes they come in from having done an associate's degree elsewhere, and so they may only be here two years, and if they don't use this time here, if they don't make friends here, it's harder. This is one of the best times to make friends, and yet I see a lot of times students kind of come to their class and leave, come in their class and leave. They spend their time in the halls looking at their phones instead of talking to the real humans around them. But having a group of friends is really important, isn't it? Yeah, as you get older especially, you'll discover that old friends are some of the best friends.
Speaker 2:You know they really are. As Ashley said, I'm really grateful for your service. I'm really also grateful that you came and let us talk to you and pick your brains here, and is there anything that you want to add that you thought? Oh, I wish they'd say this.
Speaker 3:It just occurred to me, we didn't talk about the resources available to veterans a lot outside of school. The Texas Veteran Commission website is a fantastic resource that has a bunch of paths you can go down to see. If you're someone looking to get back into school or if you're not gonna go back to school, there's other opportunities out there VR&E, which can help you find a job that fits you if you're injured. There's Vet Tech, which can help you get a training in the trades. If you're not interested in going to a four-year school and getting a degree, there's other opportunities out there besides just going to college. Everybody talks about going to college like it's the only one, but there's a lot and you know you reach out if you're struggling.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, that's probably the number one thing is to reach out. It's kind of directly enforced at least when you're in is like there's no real reason to try and take a step back. A lot of people don't like to go to medical because going to medical kind of sends a message that you're not trying as hard as everybody else or you're not as committed as everybody else, which is complete nonsense. Even though it persists. There's no way you can do it by yourself. It's not possible.
Speaker 4:And even if you think you are him or that guy or that girl who can do it all by himself, I understand you had somebody who raised you, you had people who taught you how to speak, how to do numbers. All these things Rely on that. You know, hone that skill of reaching out and making those connections, especially for veterans. Even if you don't really want to use those resources and go into school or a trade or anything like that, just get involved. Those resources and going to school or a trade or anything like that, just get involved. One of the most valuable things for me personally is just to know that there's value in my service, and not just for the military but in the community. The day-to-day stuff you know. Find somewhere where you can have a task that you can commit yourself to and really give it a genuine full effort, because that will show you, regardless of the details and whatever else is going on, there's still things you can do.
Speaker 2:You're still valuable, especially to yourself yeah, and what y'all are doing right now is you're building on top of a really firm foundation of having learned a lot in the military. You're adding new skills, you're adding new ways of thinking, deeper kind of thought. But I think you're right that having something to give to the community whether it's in your church or your family, friends, your profession as a teacher or a doctor or a lawyer, where you're giving services to others, it's enormously fulfilling. It's funny at my point in my career I still get great joy in knowing that today I helped Natalie get her stuff together. Today I got to encourage so-and-so. Today I got to make sure that so-and-so made it to class on time and got his work done.
Speaker 2:Whatever it is, you end up finding out what you want to do when you finally grow up at 49 or 59. Make sure you're doing something for other people. I think, from what you've said already, that you've already got that in your head, and I know you do too. Cody, thank you for doing it for us today. It was very interesting to both of us. You've really made my week and I want to thank you both for being here. I'm glad to get to know you. Maybe you need to come take an English class with me. Maybe we'll teach you how much you love literature, or get you to practice how much you already love literature, and, in the meantime, have a great weekend, you guys. So well, that was pretty interesting. I enjoyed that. I guess that's a wrap, ashley.
Speaker 5:Yes ma'am, this has been the Ask Dr Ross podcast. Thank you so much for listening in with us today, and if you have questions about college life or any of the topics that we were talking about today, please send us your questions to ADRquestions at gmailcom. We'd love to hear from you. In the meanwhile, we'll see you in the next episode. Thank you very much. This is Ashley Wertlich signing off.
