A couple of weeks ago, there was an informal evening meeting of the USA Student Veterans' Association. A few of us (to include another EOD tech) were in agreement that life was a whole lot easier when all we had to worry about was people trying to kill us. We also agreed that it's a different dynamic of learning than what people who have six, eight, ten, or more years of service are used to. The eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds are still in the school mindset, since they are just coming off of 12 years or so of K-12 education. The four-and-out soldiers usually aren't too terribly far removed from the mindset; it's a little rusty sitting back in the corner of the mind, but it's there and it comes back out before too long.
That's not always the case with the troops who have years of service under their belts when they first enroll. We're used to a mix of lecture and hands on training. In EOD school, the ratio of classroom days to practical days was roughly 1:3, not including study hall in the mornings or evenings. We learned the basics of everything from EEE (Explosives and Explosive Effects) to nukes in just under a year, with our units fine tuning our knowledge once we graduated. Even in the 25Q course, instructors would alternate a couple of hours of lecture with hands on using MSE/DGE patch panels and shelters. In my case specifically, I'm excelling in class discussions or lab days, while I'm ready to shotgun a fifth of Woodford and throw the deuces before thirty minutes has passed in a lecture (and I excelled in biology and chemistry in HS).
It's all about having to get into the right mindset. I am not the only one who feels like "{I} could learn this shit in half the time if {I} could just cut through all the bullshit." But how much of it is bullshit, vs. having to readjust to a setting where the consequences of your decisions do not manifest in a fraction of the time that civilians are used to (as is the case with life and death decisions). Hell, I get foul tempered when my test grades aren't uploaded to the website within 48 hours after the Scantron test is administered, while my classmates have a more laisséz faire attitude about it.
Being stuck in a room with 70-80 children not yet old enough to drink doesn't exactly help prior service maintain their motivation, either. That comes down to working on interpersonal skills, though. A former finance clerk would have an easier time adjusting to that than a salty dog 0300/CMF 11 series would (or a brash, brazen bomb jockey, for that matter). Entering college was, to me, a bigger culture shock than my first time out in Ramadi as a specialist in 2003, and I am not the only former troop that feels that way.
The problem is when do you fit in the time to help readjust the mindset? ACAP for many separating troops is a check-the-block event that gets you out of work call formation for a couple of days. If someone is getting ready to ETS right after a combat deployment, especially after a high OPTEMPO tour, the reintegration briefs will blend with everything else, and it becomes a bowl of mental gruel that the troop isn't really going to process until freshman orientation at State U, and then he's not going to recall it all. PTSD/TBI doesn't help the situation, either. Involvement with a student veterans' group will probably help with the reintegration, but that would require the support of faculty and administrators at State U. At USA, I was surprised to find out that there are quite a few faculty members who are veterans, but that may not always be the case at other institutions of higher learning.
On the flip side, why push every swinging dick with an honorable discharge and a DD214 into a four year college? Why not take the
Mike Rowe approach? I know I can't be the only one that misses having a hands on job on a regular basis while listening to some doddering old man drone on about *insert subject here*. In my case, my aptitude tests leaned more towards jobs that do require a 4-year degree or higher (nuclear engineer, anesthesiologist, chemist), but not everyone is geared that way. The GI Bill covers training for skilled trades, too. It's not something that you hear people emphasize too often during the ACAP briefs.
