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This podcast is about going to college after military service. The advantages and the challenges of pursuing higher education post military career.
0:00:00
(Speaker 2)
Hello, and welcome to the Rebel Vets podcast. This is a podcast that will be centered around the experience of going to college after military service. I'm your host, Derek, a former ammo troop in the US Air Force, and I served for 20 years. Let's start the show. I have with me today, Becca Watt.
0:00:23
(Speaker 2)
We met in Journalism 107 with Dr. Norse. It was during introduction. I think I remember you saying that you were a veteran and I was like, oh, hello. I got to talk to this person. But it was an interesting occurrence that happened in the class. I started chatting with you and another person also named Becca, also with red hair.
0:00:44
(Speaker 2)
Two redheaded Beccas in the same journalism class. I'm like, what are the odds of that?
0:00:48
(Speaker 1)
That was pretty funny.
0:00:50
(Speaker 2)
I know. We hit it off, so we would chat in the morning before class on Monday, and during lab and stuff, and also afterwards. So go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself, where you're from, and we'll get into your military career.
0:01:03
(Speaker 1)
Well, my name's Becca. I grew up a little bit all over the West Coast. I was born in Washington, raised in California, and moved to Vegas when I was about 18. I love to write and read, and I'm currently in school for psychology.
0:01:22
(Speaker 2)
What made you decide to join the military? What was interesting or attractive about the Coast Guard to you?
0:01:28
(Speaker 1)
So actually, I was fully against joining the military before I went in. It was never in the cards for me because I didn't want to be viewed as a number. And I didn't see all the other aspects of the military.
0:01:47
(Speaker 2)
You were afraid that you would lose a little bit of like personal identity? Yeah. Being like distilled down to your rank and your last name?
0:01:53
(Speaker 6)
Yeah.
0:01:54
(Speaker 1)
Okay. So I just never had it in my mind. But then when I was 19, I couldn't figure out exactly what I wanted to do. I've always loved writing, but it's a hard field to get into,
0:02:09
(Speaker 1)
so I've always wanted a backup plan, and I didn't have any other plans going on, and my dad just goes, what if you join the military? And I was like, what if I did? And then I looked into it, I got serious about it, and I was actually really serious
0:02:27
(Speaker 1)
about joining the Army at first. I wanted to do journalism in the Army. But I don't remember exactly what happened. I think the Coast Guard recruiter just pulled me in with all of his stories.
0:02:42
(Speaker 2)
Were they in the same complex? Was the Coast Guard next to the Army office?
0:02:45
(Speaker 1)
No, it was different. But, um.
0:02:48
(Speaker 2)
What made you, what was attractive about the Coast Guard? So was the recruiter you talked to? It sounds like he had a good sales pitch.
0:02:56
(Speaker 1)
He definitely, he told me about going out on the water. He told me about like, swim calls and fishing calls and everything you get to do when you're in port versus when you're out on the water. And like he told me about the camaraderie of being in the Coast Guard
0:03:12
(Speaker 1)
and just made it sound so glorified that I was like there's no way I'm doing anything else.
0:03:17
(Speaker 13)
This is super sick.
0:03:19
(Speaker 1)
And they told me about cooking and how easy it was to get into the baking side of things for cooking. And I thought that sounded like a great idea. So I became a cook.
0:03:32
(Speaker 2)
Okay. So you worked in the galley on a ship, on a Coast Guard ship. Typically how long does a Coast Guard like mission last? I'm not really sure. How many people aboard a boat?
0:03:42
(Speaker 1)
That completely depends. I actually was stationed at a base, so I would go TDY, which is like temporary duty, out where I was needed the most. So I would just go on little short stints for like a month or so.
0:03:59
(Speaker 1)
That's where I ended up on this boat called the Eagle. But it could be anywhere from like six to 12 months to like just a couple weeks.
0:04:09
(Speaker 2)
You could be out on the water that long in the Coast Guard?
0:04:12
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, they have these really big icebreaker boats that go and break down the ice.
0:04:17
(Speaker 2)
Wow, so you could be cooking for like a crew of how many people?
0:04:22
(Speaker 1)
That would probably be about 100. But actually on land it tends to be more because you're serving more people at the base. So sometimes on a boat it's a little nicer because you're serving the same people every day and it's the crew and it's a little more personal.
0:04:39
(Speaker 2)
That makes a lot more sense now. So you are not only just a cook on a ship, you are also a cook at the cafeteria or the mess hall. What do you guys call it in the Coast Guard?
0:04:47
(Speaker 1)
The mess hall.
0:04:48
(Speaker 2)
The mess hall? Yeah. So then you would have to... What was your favorite meal of the day to make or your least favorite?
0:04:55
(Speaker 1)
Oh, breakfast, because I like doing eggs to order.
0:04:58
(Speaker 2)
Ah, okay. like could expertly crack an egg and cook it right in front of you? Oh, that's awesome. I always loved those guys. There was a deployment I had where they always had an omelet station set up and the guys that could do it were like so fast at making your omelet or your eggs right in front of you.
0:05:16
(Speaker 1)
You gotta keep up with the line. And that was so hard for me when I started. That was really difficult. And I remember struggling and breaking eggs and just destroying people's omelets. I could not make an omelet to save my life
0:05:33
(Speaker 1)
for about the first six months. And they kept putting me on eggs to order. And they were like, well, one day you're gonna be good. One day you're gonna be good. And then I just fell in love with it.
0:05:42
(Speaker 2)
Okay. So it's kind of like that repetitive, like, I'm never going to get good at this. And then one day you're like, I am the omelet master.
0:05:49
(Speaker 6)
Yeah.
0:05:50
(Speaker 2)
That's fantastic. So where did you serve and how long did you serve for? I know you said you were at a base.
0:05:55
(Speaker 1)
So I was in for a total of about three years. And I went to boot camp in Cape May, New Jersey Okay, and then I went to a school in Petaluma, California
0:06:09
(Speaker 2)
What's if you don't want me asking what's Coast Guard basic training look like because I always heard you guys had like a pretty intensive
0:06:16
(Speaker 1)
the Physicality of it is modeled after the Marine Corps boot camp. Oh, man The mental aspect is modeled after the Marine Corps boot camp. Oh, man. That's heavy duty. And the mental aspect is modeled after the Air Force. So they try to take complicated... They make it as complicated as possible.
0:06:34
(Speaker 2)
Yeah, I do. I mean, our physical requirements aren't as difficult as the Army, but they did... The Air Force did a lot of homework. They gave us a pamphlet and we had to like study Air Force history and military tactics and all the rules and regulations and we had to take a bunch of tests and stuff, multiple choice that they, you know, as we work our way.
0:06:54
(Speaker 1)
We did a lot of testing, but we also did a lot of running.
0:06:58
(Speaker 2)
Oh yeah. It was military basic training.
0:07:00
(Speaker 12)
Yeah.
0:07:01
(Speaker 2)
All right. Oh, and so where were these bases? What was your primary like area of operation?
0:07:06
(Speaker 1)
Um, I spent most of my time at base Seattle and huge it sounds detail. Yes
0:07:11
(Speaker 2)
Okay, and I loved it Emerald City, right? Like what did you like about living in the bay in that Seattle area?
0:07:18
(Speaker 1)
See the weather. Yeah, I prefer I prefer the cold. I must be honest. I loved being close to the water all the time. I was, I mean, I could go to work. If I was on a break, I could literally just walk outside and there was the ocean right there. I had boats around me all the time. I had great people around me all the time.
0:07:43
(Speaker 2)
Awesome, and you never ran out of things to do up there?
0:07:47
(Speaker 15)
No.
0:07:48
(Speaker 2)
Did you ever get up into the Cascades and go hiking and stuff?
0:07:50
(Speaker 6)
A little bit.
0:07:51
(Speaker 14)
A little bit?
0:07:52
(Speaker 1)
A little bit. I did a lot of hiking, but not very much in the Cascades.
0:07:58
(Speaker 2)
Yeah, didn't want to walk on those volcanoes over there. Yeah, that's, I can sympathize with that. Like you're from Vegas, right? Originally. And I'm from Albuquerque, New Mexico. So we're both desert people, right? And my first one of my assignments was Guam. So I was stationed on this island in the South Pacific. So I really grew to love like, oh, well, you know what? I live near the ocean and I can drive down to the beach whenever I want, play in the sand or swim in the ocean.
0:08:26
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, that's, it's nice.
0:08:28
(Speaker 2)
You appreciate green, green and blue, the colors you don't get a lot of in the desert.
0:08:31
(Speaker 1)
And also just wanting to do outdoor activities because the weather's maybe not 118 degrees.
0:08:37
(Speaker 2)
Yeah, I've heard the climate is pretty nice when it's not raining on you all the time in Seattle. We talked a little bit earlier about your favorite TDY. Do you want to tell me a little bit about that? Apparently the Coast Guard has an actual sailing ship.
0:08:51
(Speaker 1)
So that was when I went on the Coast Guard Cutter Eagle. That is a boat that is currently used to train officers, but it was used in World War II. It's the last remaining sailboat in the Coast Guard, which is really crazy at night when you're trying to sleep because the boat will do a full 180 degrees with the sails. So you'll be lying in bed and you'll be,
0:09:17
(Speaker 1)
you have to like line your side and wedge yourself. The beds are really small on boats.
0:09:22
(Speaker 2)
Or else it will like rock you off
0:09:24
(Speaker 1)
because like it moves so much? It moves so much that you're going fully back and then fully forward. And so you gotta like wedge yourself in. But I got to cook on that and I was the night baker.
0:09:39
(Speaker 2)
Okay.
0:09:40
(Speaker 1)
So I got to sleep in till 10 every day. Then I got to wake up, go up on deck, and enjoy the sunshine for a little bit, which a lot of my shipmates didn't get to do because they were in the kitchen from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. and I didn't have to check in till 1 p.m.
0:10:04
(Speaker 1)
So I'd wake up at 10, I'd go sit on deck for a while, eat something, and then I'd check into the galley and spend the rest of my day cooking lunch, dinner, and then I would stay on late and I'd make like corn dogs or like some good like nighttime munchie food, some fries and chicken nuggets or something for the night shift people.
0:10:30
(Speaker 2)
Everyone's got the midnight meal, you know? I think the one that I liked the most was a grilled cheese sandwich.
0:10:35
(Speaker 13)
Just like a hot, cheesy grilled cheese.
0:10:36
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, we do grilled cheese sandwiches sometimes. We'd have a rotation of easy foods to make that were perfect for for like nighttime. Like, and I'd stay up late and then during that time I would make all the desserts for the next day.
0:10:51
(Speaker 2)
Okay, that's a really neat assignment.
0:10:53
(Speaker 1)
But that also gave me a chance to go up on deck when it wasn't too crazy going full 180 back and forth. When it was just a nice calm night, I got to go up on deck and watch the stars.
0:11:05
(Speaker 7)
Oh wow.
0:11:06
(Speaker 2)
Yeah, I only got to experience that one time. Like I was on a fishing boat in Guam. I mean, it's a different experience, but like I had never really been out on the open ocean before that.
0:11:16
(Speaker 5)
Oh, that's super cool.
0:11:18
(Speaker 2)
A desert person, but they, you know, we got on and the charter took us away from the island, so I'd never seen Guam but from the air or on it. But looking at it disappear and getting smaller in the ocean was like, it was a different intense experience. Yeah, it's a different experience.
0:11:34
(Speaker 12)
Yeah.
0:11:35
(Speaker 2)
I was like, okay, that's where I live, but I'm here in the ocean now. The Pacific Ocean, it's humongous. Okay, so let's move on a little bit and talk about your journey here at UNLV with your education. So you got out of the Coast Guard and moved back to Las Vegas.
0:11:53
(Speaker 1)
Yes. What made you pick UNLV? Well, my parents live here in Vegas and I, at first, I wanted just a safe home base where I could come back and make sure I had my stuff together. I did get medically retired from the military. So taking a couple months to make sure I was getting back on my feet
0:12:17
(Speaker 1)
and making sure my physical health was back up to par before getting back out there and attacking the world was definitely necessary for me. And then I ended up going to CSN. So I did two years there and got my associates degree in creative writing.
0:12:36
(Speaker 2)
That's awesome.
0:12:36
(Speaker 1)
Then I started at UNLV, so now we're here.
0:12:39
(Speaker 2)
Okay, so that was a step one associates degree.
0:12:42
(Speaker 6)
Yes.
0:12:43
(Speaker 2)
And this is step two bachelor's degree. And you mentioned it was psychology?
0:12:46
(Speaker 1)
Yes, I did change degrees. So originally I was gonna do a creative writing degree all the way up. And then I was like, why am I doing that? I can literally just write. So I've started taking the steps to make sure
0:13:03
(Speaker 1)
I'm writing as much as possible and doing the steps to take the journey to where I want to go next in my life, which took me a long time to find after getting out of the Coast Guard because I wanted to stay in for 20 years. But now the goal for me is to get a bachelor's in psychology and never use it.
0:13:24
(Speaker 2)
Interesting. Because I know you had mentioned earlier and we talked a little bit that creative writing is your passion. Yes. That's what you're truly passionate about.
0:13:33
(Speaker 2)
You could become a published, profitable author. That's the dream come true. But I understand that you still got bills to pay.
0:13:41
(Speaker 1)
Added on still, but I'm going to be doing a double major of psychology and creative writing Here, okay, and then I'll have a choice when I go on to my master's I can pick which route I'm gonna take a couple years off after my bachelor's see what I could do with this writing thing and Then I have a choice for when I go for my master's I can see which route I think is better for me at
0:14:04
(Speaker 1)
That time that's awesome. I hope is better for me at that time.
0:14:05
(Speaker 2)
That's awesome. I hope that you find some avenues that actually work out for you.
0:14:09
(Speaker 5)
Thank you.
0:14:10
(Speaker 2)
It's a tough, I always admire creatives. You and I were both at the same Comic Con in Phoenix. And I always look at the artists and the authors there and I kind of marvel at what they can do. marvel at what they can do, how they can take a character or and fashion it into their own style or take a story and like put their own spin on it.
0:14:30
(Speaker 1)
That's super cool. And I love going to those events because I love being surrounded by those kinds of people, because that's what I want to do. Yeah.
0:14:39
(Speaker 11)
That's what I love to do.
0:14:40
(Speaker 2)
I hope it, you find something that, I hope you find success in that. I truly do because It always seems like wizardry to me right because I am such a like in-the-box thinker non-creative non-artistic type that those that can do it and do it well, I'm like
0:14:57
(Speaker 1)
Amazed by I have to have some kind of creativeness in everything. I'm doing. Yeah, so the reason I pick What I do what I do, why I do cooking, I can be creative with that. There's options for that. You can choose what spices you're putting on. It gives you like options to do that. So that was my choice for the Coast Guard.
0:15:20
(Speaker 1)
I learned that like coming out of that, I didn't really want to do that in this Philly world. But writing was always my passion anyways, even before the Coast Guard.
0:15:29
(Speaker 2)
And so that's a good segue into using your GI Bill. So you're happy about the fact that you started at a community college, and I'm assuming that you applied for your benefits and got all that stuff through the VA without a problem.
0:15:43
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, so I'm using my GI Bill now. I actually, I took a loan for community college because it was significantly cheaper. And I wanted to use my GI Bill for as much of the later college as possible.
0:16:00
(Speaker 2)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, a lot cheaper to get the associates and pay that loan off faster than using your master's. That's some heavy duty schooling you got going on.
0:16:10
(Speaker 1)
But now I'm deciding on a double bachelor's, so there's some decisions there to be made.
0:16:17
(Speaker 2)
What brought you, because I know you've taken some journalism and some criminal justice, what'd you think about those classes?
0:16:24
(Speaker 1)
So I actually really enjoyed the classes. I just thought about it really hard and I don't think the career field would be for me because I'm such a fiction writer that the journalism was too realistic and I wanna put a fantasy spin on it and I can't do that.
0:16:45
(Speaker 2)
I see. So you wouldn't even be interested in writing like opinion, where you get a little bit more license not like kind of how we were learning how to write in the ADA style of like, oh, these are the things that happened, let me tell you the exact story.
0:16:57
(Speaker 1)
I would be interested in opinion.
0:16:59
(Speaker 10)
Yeah.
0:17:00
(Speaker 1)
But that's because I'm very opinionated.
0:17:01
(Speaker 2)
It gives you a little bit more latitude to expound upon your thoughts, right?
0:17:07
(Speaker 9)
Yeah.
0:17:08
(Speaker 2)
So what are some things that you like about going to school here?
0:17:10
(Speaker 1)
Well, coming from a community college, it was a wild experience because this college has so many more options for you. Like even just having like recording studios and like just options for classes. There's more options, options for like what you can do.
0:17:31
(Speaker 1)
There's more degrees. There's like so many buildings. This campus is so big. And it was just coming here, it was like, it was almost just a complete shock for me because I was like so used to the tiny little
0:17:47
(Speaker 1)
campuses and I got comfortable with that and then coming here at first I was like, oh my goodness Like how am I gonna get used to this? But now that I've taken my time to get used to it
0:17:58
(Speaker 2)
I wouldn't have it any other way. There is literally a building on this campus for everything I remember one day I had to park in the Cottage Grove parking lot because you should see this place during regular semesters. The parking here can be a pain in the butt sometimes. I wound up at Cottage Grove and I'd never been on that side of the campus walking through because you've got fine arts over there, but then you've also got our crazy huge state
0:18:24
(Speaker 2)
of the art engineering building. I don't know if you've also got our crazy huge state of the art engineering building.
0:18:26
(Speaker 1)
I don't know if you've ever walked past that. I have not.
0:18:30
(Speaker 2)
Okay, yeah, you should check it out. It looks like it's from the future. It literally has LED screens and stuff on the outside of it. That's crazy. Yeah, so I'm like, huh. It's kind of interesting to see what parts of this campus are like old infrastructure. So when you come here,
0:18:46
(Speaker 2)
if you're taking your basic one-on-one classes, we're all in the Carroll Harder building, which is just the most generic, plain classroom, boring building that there ever was. But once you start going into your upper division or other classes specific to your career,
0:19:00
(Speaker 2)
then you get going into the individual college buildings, which are always different.
0:19:05
(Speaker 3)
Nicer.
0:19:06
(Speaker 2)
Yeah, and nicer. We're talking to you right now from the Greenspun building, which as Becca mentioned, is the center for communication studies in journalism. So of course here we've got like two different TV studios, three different audio recording areas. So there's a lot of resources here.
0:19:25
(Speaker 1)
Everything's super new in here and everything's nice.
0:19:28
(Speaker 2)
Yeah, yeah, that's really great about like how UNLV can just give you access to more things to try.
0:19:34
(Speaker 1)
Having those resources was a game changer for me.
0:19:38
(Speaker 2)
A game changer.
0:19:40
(Speaker 1)
Also, the classes that I decided to take last semester, regardless of me deciding that I didn't want to go further into a career for that, have helped me in the career that I want to have. And so, I need to have some kind of a social media journalistic presence
0:20:03
(Speaker 1)
in order to make noise about my writing.
0:20:07
(Speaker 4)
Oh yeah.
0:20:08
(Speaker 1)
So that was something that ended up being really useful for me.
0:20:12
(Speaker 2)
That's great to hear, yeah, because it's so important like everyone tells you that you know your degree is just a way to to get you in the door so that you can sell yourself. But really when it comes to, hey I'm an author that's trying to break through and sell my manuscript to a publisher, you really are trying to sell like yourself and your story to a publisher.
0:20:34
(Speaker 1)
You are. I like to pick the most difficult things and do them.
0:20:38
(Speaker 2)
It certainly sounds that way. Hey man, but to each their own. I gotta give it to you, because again, the idea of me sitting down to write a book is daunting. I could not fathom it. Like you, I love to read. It's one of those things that we talked about.
0:20:57
(Speaker 2)
I'll just ask you, you reading anything good right now? I'm still reading, I know I think I told you this last time, I'm reading Joe Abercrombie's books. He was a historical fantasy writer, and I'm reading the First Law Trilogy, which is pretty interesting.
0:21:13
(Speaker 1)
I'm still reading the same series. I started it at the end of last semester, but I'm getting, I'm like halfway through
0:21:18
(Speaker 8)
it now.
0:21:19
(Speaker 2)
Yeah?
0:21:20
(Speaker 1)
What is it? He Who Fights With Monsters by Chertolune or Travis Deverell, I believe.
0:21:27
(Speaker 2)
Okay, what's the story?
0:21:29
(Speaker 1)
It's a lit RPG, so essentially the main character wakes up and is in a, what seems like a video game with the powers he's given, but he's in another world. And he's trying to figure out how to get given, but he's in another world. And he's trying to figure out how to get home, but he's also trying to figure out how to navigate the world, and he makes a bunch of new friends, so it's kind of like a found
0:21:52
(Speaker 1)
family type of book.
0:21:54
(Speaker 8)
Okay.
0:21:55
(Speaker 1)
It's really good.
0:21:57
(Speaker 7)
All right.
0:21:58
(Speaker 2)
I've never heard of a RPG-like story before. That's interesting. It's pretty sick. To go back to your degree a little bit, what do you find interesting about psychology?
0:22:08
(Speaker 1)
So, I'm really interested in how the human brain works. I wanna know why people do what they do. And I, as of this point, have very little knowledge of that because I've really only taken some introductory courses to psychology. So I'm excited to get a little bit further
0:22:27
(Speaker 1)
into this next semester. But mostly I'm just interested in like why people are the way they are.
0:22:36
(Speaker 2)
What makes them tick, what makes them make the decisions that they do.
0:22:39
(Speaker 6)
Yeah.
0:22:40
(Speaker 2)
I've only taken one. I had to take a psychology 101 I think for an elective credit, but it was an interesting eye-opening experience. I'm sure you'll learn about the Stanford Prison Experiment. Have you ever heard of that one?
0:22:50
(Speaker 1)
I have not.
0:22:51
(Speaker 2)
No? It's a famous prison experiment where the psychology department put it on. Basically they divided people into two classes, prisoners and guards, because they wanted to test how people could exercise self-control given this scenario. So they're like, this is a scenario,
0:23:09
(Speaker 2)
but we want you to treat it like it's real. So it didn't take long before the guards, their only job was to keep the prisoners in the prison. They just turned a building in the campus into the prison. And the guards started abusing the prisoners almost immediately.
0:23:25
(Speaker 5)
That's insane.
0:23:26
(Speaker 2)
Oh yeah, look it up. It's a very interesting story.
0:23:28
(Speaker 1)
I'll definitely look into it, yeah.
0:23:30
(Speaker 2)
It's one of those that you definitely learned about in psychology class. And how we can't do that kind of stuff anymore. I think it happened back in the 70s. Well I'm really glad that you came to talk to me today. Yeah, it was great. that you came to talk to me today. Yeah, it was great. Got anything that you want to plug? Anything that you want to talk about?
0:23:49
(Speaker 2)
I know you're just like me, you're also an undergrad, so we don't have a whole lot much more to plug in our lives.
0:23:57
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, I'm excited to see what this next chapter brings for me. The military was a really good chapter for me, even though it didn't end the way I had wanted it to. It helped me learn a lot, and I saw a lot of growth in my life through there. And I'm excited to see what kind of growth I see
0:24:17
(Speaker 1)
over myself in the next, it's probably gonna take me a little longer than two years to get this degree, because it's a double major, but probably two and a half to three years.
0:24:28
(Speaker 2)
Yeah, that's great. I'm glad that the, thank you for your service, first of all, and I'm glad that the military, your service is able to open up all these doors and opportunities for you. And I hope that you're able to find success in publishing
0:24:41
(Speaker 2)
that you're looking for. And any kind of avenue. Yeah. You never know where life is going to take you, but we know that the key to unlocking a lot of those things is just, you know, finishing college and getting a degree because you never know what could happen after that.
0:24:55
(Speaker 4)
All right.
0:24:55
(Speaker 2)
Thank you, Becca.
0:24:56
(Speaker 3)
Thank you.
0:24:57
(Speaker 2)
Thank you everyone for listening to this podcast. If you want more information about the show or the guest interview, please send an email to rebel vets at gmail.com And to my veterans out there. Thank you for your service and your sacrifice And to my veterans out there. Thank you for your service and your sacrifice until Valhalla