Not Your Average College Students At University of Southern Florida

The Reality of Readjustment
Military.com Christine Gibson, January 25, 2008
Iraq veterans return to civilian life as students at University of South Florida, but find their combat days influencing their college experience

Chaddrick Faison can't watch the news. Watching the news reminds the veteran of his 2004 deployment in Iraq.


Sophomore Sheena Cooper guarded a base camp while in Iraq. With permission from the Oracle.


"I don't want to see stories of soldiers dying," he said.

Faison, along with 776 other students at USF, attends college using Veterans Affairs (VA) benefits, as the Montgomery GI Bill gives veterans grants for their education. Faison, along with other soldiers who have returned from combat abroad, faces challenges adjusting to civilian life, especially life as a college student, and USF offers various services to help them adjust.


http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,160767,00.html
Remember what it was like when your kid went off to college. All the problems of being away from home for the first time that went with it, from finding out where the classes were to sleeping with a roommate for the first time in a dorm; navigating laundry from one floor to another only to find their patience needing to be put into use because someone left their clothes to go get a Frappuccino. Most of them have never even done laundry before. The pressures of getting the grades are just part of it.

Now add in coming back from Iraq or Afghanistan. They are used to wearing what everyone else is wearing, eating what everyone else does and being told when to go to sleep and when to wake up. While most of their classmates were transitioning from high school to college life, they were dodging bombs in Baghdad. Carrying books instead of a machine gun and putting on a T-shirt instead of body armor were the furthest thing on their minds but it was what they intended to do once they made it home.

Colleges all across America need to understand they are not your average college student facing the same problems every other student has to adjust to. Some will come back needing not only to adjust to being in strange surroundings but to adjust to being in a place where their life is no longer in danger as well.