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Washington Post
Shifting the
mind-set for veterans moving from battlefield to classroom
By T. Rees Shapiro
Matt Menezes was a decorated combat soldier who served two tours in the
valleys of Afghanistan. But one of the toughest challenges of his life
came when he decided to leave the Army and prepare for his next
deployment: college.
The shift to civilian life can be a stress-filled departure from the
discipline and structure of the military. The transition from the
battlefield to the classroom, however, can be even more daunting, and
veterans say it can be difficult to find support.
“There's really no help on the Army’s end,” said Menezes, 31. “I was
like, ‘Okay, what am I going to do?’ ”
Then Menezes found the Warrior-Scholar Project, a nonprofit mentorship
program for enlisted veterans looking to enroll in college for the
first time. He took part in a week-long “boot camp” at Yale in 2013,
and he’s now studying neuroscience at Dartmouth, planning to head to
medical school for a second stint in the Army as a physician. For the
past week, he’s been at Georgetown, but this time as a leader helping
other veterans make the same leap to college.
“We help veterans realize their own potential and get them interested
in their own education,” Menezes said.
The Warrior-Scholar Project offered its first training in 2012 at Yale,
serving nine enlisted veterans. This year, the program will be offered
at 11 college campuses for more than 175 veterans.
The program is funded through donations and federal grants from the
National Endowment for the Humanities and is open to veterans or
active-duty troops who are considering applying to college, at no cost
to them. During the program, they join college-level seminars on
politics, receive one-on-one tutoring sessions on essay writing and
hear tips from fellow veterans like Menezes on how to study alongside
undergraduates who may be years younger.
Menezes used military lingo to make the comparison more easily
understandable: “You are basically the brand-new private coming into
their AO.” (That’s “area of operations” to everyone else.)
One morning this week, 15 veterans piled into a wood-paneled classroom
in Georgetown’s historic Healy Hall, energy-drink cans and coffee cups
at the ready. As Georgetown professor Eric Langenbacher lectured on
global politics and the spread of democracy, just the odd Army-issue
camouflage backpack betrayed the students’ backgrounds...
Read the rest of the article at the Washington Post
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