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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. My guest today is Jeff Dietrich.
0:00:20
(Speaker 2)
He is currently the director of adult education services at the Dr. William W. Sullivan Center for Academic Enrichment and Outreach here at UNLV. He's an Army veteran and UNLV alumnus and the former president of the Rebel Vets. Thank you for doing the show and happy belated birthday to the Army. I realize the Army is literally as old as our own country.
0:00:43
(Speaker 3)
Yeah, it is.
0:00:44
(Speaker 1)
Yeah. Thank you, Yeah. Thank you man Thank you for having me. It is like 250 years old on Saturday. So yeah, well and welcome to the show
0:00:51
(Speaker 2)
So go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself
0:00:54
(Speaker 1)
We talked a little bit earlier and you said you're a military brat and you're kind of from all over. Yeah. Yeah, so My both my parents from the army and that's how they met. My dad was in Special Forces for 23 years. So I was born in Europe, in Germany, in Bad Toults. And then from there, parents obviously, PCS back to the States. My brother was born at Fort Bragg.
0:01:18
(Speaker 1)
Dad got out of the Army because he was gonna go work for his father in Southern California, where he was from originally. And then unfortunately, his father passed unexpectedly. Dad started working construction in LA, hated it, missed the Army, went back in.
0:01:33
(Speaker 1)
So we had that break in service for like three years. So for three years we lived in Southern California. So outside of me growing up around in the Army on military bases and stuff, and then me joining the Army, Southern California and Vegas are the first places
0:01:48
(Speaker 1)
I've lived that had no affiliation with the military whatsoever. And so, Dad retired in 96, after my brother graduated high school. We were out there at Fort Campbell, Kentucky when he was in fifth group.
0:02:01
(Speaker 1)
So we retired out of fifth group, and then they came out here. My mom had her brother who was a Navy vet that was in fifth group. So we retired out of fifth group and then they came out here. My mom had her brother who was a Navy vet that was living out here. They sided here, not Southern California. And from here, this is where I joined the Army in 99.
0:02:12
(Speaker 1)
Left from here, I was working construction.
0:02:15
(Speaker 2)
Oh, so you joined out of Vegas.
0:02:16
(Speaker 1)
I did, I did. I didn't know what I was doing, man. I was gonna do with my life. And I'd always wanted to join the military and I knew it was gonna give me some direction, either good or bad, I was gonna get something. And so there was one day at work at construction,
0:02:33
(Speaker 1)
I'm like, I'm done. And I went down to recruiter and I'm like, this is what I wanna do. And so I left for the Army.
0:02:38
(Speaker 2)
Was there any interesting conversation, I didn't mention on the last podcast, but the last two vets that I talked to Both of their dads had a conversation with them about hey, you know, what do you plans for your life? And what do you think about joining the military? It was did your dad ever have that conversation?
0:02:55
(Speaker 1)
No, actually he didn't he he said if you're gonna join the military he goes don't do what I did Okay, he was like you and your brother go be fighter pilots, you know, go do something. He goes, don't do what I did. You know, his body was banged up. He busted his back twice. He had like 900 jumps by the time he passed. He was on Halo teams and stuff like that.
0:03:13
(Speaker 1)
And then his-
0:03:14
(Speaker 2)
Yeah, special forces is heavy duty work.
0:03:16
(Speaker 1)
Well, the thing is he loved skydiving. So not only was he wasn't gone, he was, my brother and I grew up on a drop zone. He was sport parachute jump. He had his own rigs and just loved the sport. And so my brother and I grew up on drop zones at Bragg at Sicily and Anzio and stuff.
0:03:34
(Speaker 1)
Dad jumping all the time. And he just said, he's like, if you're gonna join the military, he goes, I'll be proud of you, of course, no matter what you do, he goes, but at the end of the day, he's like, just be happy in what you're doing. I don't care if you're working at a fast food restaurant or you're the trash guy picking up everybody, just be happy with what you're doing.
0:03:53
(Speaker 1)
If you don't join the military, it's all good. So of course, both my brother and I joined the Army and he's just proud as he could be, but that was always one thing he pushed upon us, is like, you know, be your own man, make your own decisions, just be happy in what it is you're doing, you know, I don't care what it is,
0:04:09
(Speaker 1)
as long as you're not breaking the law, you know?
0:04:11
(Speaker 2)
Yeah, that's good advice.
0:04:12
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, so yeah, and then I was stuck in, you know, I was working construction and-
0:04:18
(Speaker 2)
Just had enough.
0:04:19
(Speaker 1)
Just had enough, man, because I was going nowhere with it. And I just wasn't happy. And there was a catalyst at work one day. And I'm like, I'm done. And I'm out. And I just took off, went to the recruiter. I was like, this is what I want. I said, don't try and shine me on.
0:04:34
(Speaker 1)
I said, I was in for 23 years. This is what I want. How did you join? I joined in, I left for basic October 99. So I was 21 at the time.
0:04:46
(Speaker 2)
Okay, so you're a little bit older.
0:04:48
(Speaker 8)
Yeah, I was.
0:04:49
(Speaker 1)
Not straight out of high school. Right, not straight, because I tried the college route. I just didn't want to do it. I had no idea. And so I figured by joining the military,
0:04:57
(Speaker 1)
I knew I was going to get some kind of direction. And that's really what it is. A little bit in there was like, oh, I need to give back. Growing up around the military, but the biggest driver for me was like, I need direction, dude. I'm 21 years old, I'm still crashing at mom and dad's. This is no good. Let's get out on your own, take that step and do what you need to do.
0:05:15
(Speaker 1)
After a while, it does become like, what am I kind of doing here? And that's where I am today, just by being fed up with a go-to-work job. Yeah, like, all right, I gotta go. I gotta
0:05:29
(Speaker 2)
find something. You know, this ain't for me. Yeah, I know there's a lot of veterans out there that can empathize with that story, especially because school, you're an adult now. He's like, I strongly encourage you to go to college. I lacked the ambition and direction because I didn't have any to like stay disciplined with my studies. So I struggled in community college.
0:05:54
(Speaker 2)
It was jobs like that. I was working changing tires and oil at a Pep Boys. And I was like, what am I doing with my life here? My best friend had joined the Marine Corps and he was off in Iraq and I was changing tires and I'm like, there's gotta be a better way. I think I need to go talk to a recruiter.
0:06:11
(Speaker 1)
It was funny, you say you're changing tires and stuff because after I, when I went to the recruiter, I can't remember why, but it got delayed for a bit. So I'm like, all up, I had a buddy of mine that worked at Fairway Chevrolet down on Sahara. And he got me a job at the oil place. I was changing oil and rotating tires until I left for basic trade and stuff.
0:06:31
(Speaker 1)
So it was funny you brought that up.
0:06:32
(Speaker 2)
So you joined right before 9-11?
0:06:35
(Speaker 1)
I did.
0:06:36
(Speaker 2)
And then what was that transition like? Everyone kind of talks about how the military changed a bit after that.
0:06:42
(Speaker 1)
Oh yeah, it changed big time. So I was at Benning, I got a station at Fort Benning, so the medic and I got assigned to the first phase of Ranger School there at Fort Benning. So I mainly worked long range reconnaissance and leadership course, or the LERSLIC course, and then they changed it down the road to RSLIC.
0:06:59
(Speaker 1)
Anyways, when 9-11 happened, we were out in the field with our teams and we're all huddled around the truck we had out there with the teams running, what they're doing, pulled all the teams in and like, hey, this was going on. And so, after that from going from a peace time to where we're just doing courses and whatever else
0:07:17
(Speaker 1)
and all of a sudden we're shift to war time, all the teams, the classes ended, everybody went back to the units. And with us, we were under TRADOC, Army Training Command. And so we're like, yeah, I don't, none of us are gonna be getting deployed, you know, unless we're leaving or something.
0:07:34
(Speaker 1)
Because we're under training command, it's not like we're going back to units and you get caught up and taken off. So all of us there, we're stuck in our TRADOC positions, and unless they were starting to pull onesies and twosies here or guys were coming up on PCS into different units, you know, like my whole medical platoon was fighting to get out of there,
0:07:51
(Speaker 1)
but the Army's like, no, no, no, we really need to continue running these courses now.
0:07:56
(Speaker 2)
Yeah, okay, so you were in a training?
0:07:57
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, I was in a training, so I actually didn't go to Iraq until 07. So it just got to a point to where I wasn't going anywhere and as much as all of us wanted to, we were in the training doctrine. And of course, when it kicked off, they're like, well, we really need people
0:08:13
(Speaker 1)
in these training roles because a lot of people are gonna be coming through these courses, are gonna be relevant to what we, not that they weren't relevant before, but even more so now that right at 9-11 and then yeah training is later. It's Iraq, you know Yeah, it's a mission that never ends. You always have to keep the new generation. Yeah of people trained up and ready to go
0:08:31
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, a lot of us weren't happy, you know So but it is what it is. I went to Iraq when I was supposed to go to Iraq It's the way I look at it. Yeah, so where were you stationed and were you stationed overseas? I did. So once I left Benning, I went to Europe for a couple years. I went there for two years. That's where I met my wife. She was in the Army too.
0:08:50
(Speaker 1)
Because they didn't need her MOS in Europe anymore, she was an operating room tech. And so I leave Benning and I go to Europe and I get stuck in a... I don't get stuck. It was actually kind of cool. It was very cool. I get assigned to a combat support hospital. I didn't like it coming from where I was coming. I was really wanting to go to a unit that was deploying,
0:09:10
(Speaker 1)
but that was out of my control. But what I liked about it was I worked a ton when I was at Benning. Like I've never worked so much in my life other than on deployment because our op tempo was so high because of the wars. Oh yeah. We were doing classes all the time and then we had Ranger school classes going through
0:09:26
(Speaker 1)
at the same time. We had Arslet classes going through. We had preschool. We had all of these classes going through. So I averaged a weekend off a month probably for about three years and it was crazy, man. Oh my goodness.
0:09:38
(Speaker 1)
It was just one right after another as the tempo kicked up for all the units going in and trying to train up new officers, going through Ranger School, new infantry officers and individuals going through. So when I got to Europe, I was off all the time, man. It was like going from working every weekend, except for maybe one a month, we would get off in between cycles to having so much downtime, I didn't know what to do with myself.
0:10:03
(Speaker 2)
Oh no.
0:10:04
(Speaker 1)
It was crazy. it was awesome.
0:10:05
(Speaker 3)
Kind of a yo-yo.
0:10:06
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, it was a huge yo-yo. So it took time for me to get used to that, going from this really high op tempo, training op tempo, to this really low, chill op tempo of Europe, you know, with the unit I was in. But my wife got assigned to Fort Hood and then, well it's Cavazos now, it's going back to Fort Hood I think.
0:10:27
(Speaker 1)
And then I just followed her there about six months later. And then that's when I got into, I was assigned to a unit that we were spooling up to go to Iraq. So I went in as Surgeon of Seven for 15 months. And I got assigned to.
0:10:40
(Speaker 2)
Dang, that's a long time to be in Iraq. So just to clarify a little bit, you're an army medic. What exactly does an army medic do? So I kind of know the role of a Navy Corpsman.
0:10:50
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, same concept. So your Navy Corpsman and medics are pretty much the same in their jobs. I think Navy Corpsman's have a little bit more training in the sense. This is just what I've heard because they can be the only medical personnel on a boat or something and-
0:11:05
(Speaker 2)
Right, surrounded by Marines.
0:11:06
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, yeah, and I think their training might be a little bit more intense, but that's just because of the nature of what they're doing. But for an Army medic, it's pretty much the same. I know they have corpsmen assigned to training units and units go to war units and hospitals and stuff like that. So same concept. And that's actually what I really dug about being a medic.
0:11:25
(Speaker 1)
I go from a training environment, seeing what that's all about, and then I go to a hospital environment to see what that's all about. And then when I went to Iraq, I was a senior medic for a scout company for 15 months. So now I'm running patrols for 15 months and I'm a senior medic, so I had three other medics under me. Trevor Burrus So you would, would you have to do like infield treatment like a soldier gets injured or hurt in a patrol and you're the first line
0:11:51
(Speaker 2)
of paramedics?
0:11:52
(Speaker 1)
John Glaser Yes, you're the point of, you know, you're the first person for point of injury that you're dealing with to get until you stabilize them, do what you got to do until you get them to the higher level of care. I was in third, at the time it was called third ACR, third armored cavalry regiment. So scout being, because we're armored, we're Bradley heavy. So when you have Bradley fighting vehicles,
0:12:11
(Speaker 1)
you know, the unit is usually called scouts because they're scouting and having the bigger armor like the Abrams and stuff like that. So I got assigned there and then they made me the senior medic for the troop. And so I had three other medics under me and we were in Missoula on the west side,
0:12:26
(Speaker 1)
so I had two QRF sites that we'd rotate through for 48 hours, so we'd go to one QRF site for 48 hours, go to the next one for 48 hours, come back to base, run another 48 hours of mission, and then I usually, I was able, depending on the schedule to give my guys,
0:12:42
(Speaker 1)
one down day every seven days, get one day off and then we just pick up That rotation again, unless somebody went on R&R. So one of our medics went on R&R We didn't have enough most of the time we didn't have enough to backfield. So, uh, you had to operate with less Oh, yeah So we were running Missions every day for like 30 35 days until our other medic came back and keep back in rotation and get our down day. Yeah, because you can't just let it go with no medic.
0:13:06
(Speaker 1)
You can't because we were running 24, you know, when you're in that type of environment, you're running operations 24-7, right? We had our tank and Bradley sections would do roving patrols and stuff like that through the city on particular routes that we had on the west side and then of course we're doing QRF out of our two sites for doing 96 hours of QRF. Coming back.
0:13:27
(Speaker 7)
That is a tough deployment.
0:13:28
(Speaker 6)
Dude, it was.
0:13:28
(Speaker 1)
It went by like that. It was like, oh, six months later we're back home. That's what it felt like because we were, I spent, we spent more time out in the city running a mission that we did back at FODMAREVS there in Mizzou. in Mosul. Oh my goodness. It just went by so fast. Just spending all your time in a Humvee driving around.
0:13:45
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, just running around in a Humvee doing operations, clearing operations, you name it we did it for two or three months there. We were doing a lot of visits in the middle of the night to places, picking up dudes from working with our Iraqi counterparts and stuff like that. And it was during the surge is when General Petraeus, the Iraqi surge.
0:14:08
(Speaker 1)
So that's why we were there for 15 months instead of your basic 12 because of the surge. So yeah, we were busy, man.
0:14:15
(Speaker 2)
Yeah, that's sounds like it. So you said you served for how long?
0:14:19
(Speaker 1)
I did 12 years. Okay, how come you didn't make it a career? Because I just, it wasn't fun anymore. Like when I got back from Iraq, my unit was going to light infantry. They were dumping the Bradleys and they were picking up strikers. So I was like, cool, you know, that'd be cool. Well, what happened was about two months before I redeployed back, I get on orders for the
0:14:39
(Speaker 1)
hospital at Fort Hood, I'm like, dude, I wanna go back to the hospital. That's in El Paso, right? It's in Killeen, Texas, so about an hour north of Austin. It's like right smack dab in the middle of Texas.
0:14:49
(Speaker 2)
I don't know my Army bases. I forget which one I'm thinking of.
0:14:53
(Speaker 1)
In El Paso was Fort Bliss.
0:14:54
(Speaker 2)
Oh, Bliss, okay.
0:14:55
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, right. So it was Fort Hood, now know the names are changing. So when I got back they had me on orders for the hospital and I was like dude I just coming off 15 months in Mosul I don't want to go to like the ER or some clinic or anything so it just so happened that my wife was like hey we were with the Master Sergeant in Germany and she's like hey First Sergeant Temple was the First Sergeant for Alpha Company. Cool, so when I got back, I just went over to him.
0:15:27
(Speaker 1)
I was like, hey, First Sergeant, I was like, I'm just coming off deployment, man. I said, I really don't wanna go to the ER. This is before I signed into the unit. And he knew me from Europe and stuff, really awesome. He was one of my favorite First Sergeants. a job for me, he goes, I need a training room NCO. Roger, I'm your guy. So I just was the training room NCO for a year.
0:15:47
(Speaker 1)
And I say a year because coming into the end of that year, I come on order for Afghanistan. There's a unit that's deploying to Afghanistan off of Fort Hood, it's an aviation unit.
0:15:58
(Speaker 2)
So like helicopters?
0:15:59
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, yeah, so I was like, cool, I can go be a flight medic. I've been on the ground, I've worked in a hospital, I've done training, let me go be a flight medic, right? Let me do CASIVAC. And so when I started working on what's called the upslip, you get your flight physical, so you can be like,
0:16:13
(Speaker 1)
hey, I can get on flight status, and hopefully, I'm just kind of being preemptive, because I show on orders. So they were ahead of me by like a month. You wanted to make sure you had all your qualifications. Yeah, so I'm like, let me already go over there with my upslip, just like, hey, I got my upslip, I can be a flight medic for you guys.
0:16:32
(Speaker 1)
Even though I didn't go through the course, I can get OJT and my experience with Iraq and everything. So long story short, I get over there, flight medics. I'm like, ah. So what happened was I got put on the life support. So I got stuck in a training role for American forces coming into theaters. So like coin training, IED lane training,
0:16:53
(Speaker 1)
rollover training, all this training. And I was miserable, man. I was, because I wasn't doing what I wanted to do. I was like, I was hoping I could be the flight medic if nothing else. It's like, I was trying to like, hey, you guys need a line medic
0:17:05
(Speaker 1)
for these new units coming through.
0:17:07
(Speaker 2)
Sounds like your job opportunities kind of dried up.
0:17:09
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, it did, and so it wasn't a fun deployment, without getting into it too much, it just, some of the worst leadership I had when I was in the Army.
0:17:18
(Speaker 2)
Yeah, that can always make things tough.
0:17:19
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, and so what happened was, I was like, dude, I'm done. Like I was on the cusp anyways, I had already hit in like 10 years. I extended to meet the deployment because I wanted to go to Afghanistan. But when I got over there, I'm like, yeah, dude, I'm done. And so what really cemented the decision for me to get out was we were on our way out
0:17:37
(Speaker 1)
and the company commander called me up and said, hey, I see that you're exiting, or you're coming up on re-enlistment, you're probably getting an ETS, we really want to keep you in. You know, it was like any unit commander, first sergeant wanna do is try and keep their troops in. And I was like, look, sir, I said, I appreciate it,
0:17:54
(Speaker 1)
I said, but it's just not fun for me anymore. That deployment to Afghanistan felt like 10 years Iraq was like six months, right? Because we were so busy. And I was just miserable, I didn't want to do it. And he looked at me and he's like, you know, and he flies helicopters, right? And I could tell he had a rough one too. It was just, I don't think it was a good deployment
0:18:13
(Speaker 1)
for everybody just because of the nature of just where we were and stuff. We were up north in RC North. And he's like, I'm like, dude, you fly helicopters. I get it, the military knows how to ruin a good time with certain things, but I said, you still get to fly. You know, this is all in my head.
0:18:31
(Speaker 1)
And when he said that, I'm like, that's exactly, that's it, it's time for me to go. And so a lot of people are like, dude, you were gonna'm at 12 years, but I'm so miserable right now that I can't justify staying in another eight years. If I was sitting at 15, maybe 14 years, Roger.
0:18:49
(Speaker 2)
You can gut it out.
0:18:50
(Speaker 1)
I can gut it out, I can suck it up, but at the time, the wife and I didn't have any, we don't have children. There's no reason for me to just be miserable for another eight years. I was just like, it's just time to go. And I'm glad I left. I left when I was supposed to, because when I get here to UNLV to go to school,
0:19:05
(Speaker 1)
it's just all this stuff led me to where I am now. If I had stayed in on retirement, you and I would not be having this conversation.
0:19:11
(Speaker 2)
So that's the perfect segue. You separate from the military. Now you're a veteran.
0:19:16
(Speaker 1)
You move, your wife's still in, So she actually got- How did you get here? She got medically retired. So the day we go pick up her retirement papers, the army medically retired her because she got sick when I was in Iraq. That's when I get a call from my SAR major, like, hey, you're on order to Afghanistan. So what happened was, is we moved her to Savannah, Georgia, because we had some friends there and she wanted to finish up her master's because when she joined the army, she was in the middle of a master's, got burned out, was like deuces, I'm out.
0:19:46
(Speaker 1)
She literally 180'd and went off into the army. Oh wow. As enlisted, right?
0:19:50
(Speaker 2)
Doesn't usually go that way.
0:19:51
(Speaker 1)
Oh no, she was like, at least go in as an officer. She's like, nope, I want to go in as enlisted and see what that is like and then I can do mission down the road if I want to, if I enjoyed enough. So I get out, start going to school, go to Savannah. I'm miserable, I'm angry. Like my deployment to Afghanistan wasn't what I wanted. I mean, everybody else was happy that I wasn't
0:20:13
(Speaker 1)
running a mission and doing what I was doing in Iraq, but I was miserable. And so it got to a point to where she's like, okay, let's go to Vegas. Because she's originally from Pennsylvania. I'm like, oh, I never thought about going back to Vegas. You know, it just never crossed my mind.
0:20:28
(Speaker 1)
And so-
0:20:29
(Speaker 2)
Georgia wasn't a good fit for you.
0:20:31
(Speaker 1)
No, dude, I didn't, like, because of the military, I have stationed in Georgia, I just didn't want to be on the East Coast anymore. Gotcha. You know, just,, it was a roll of the dice. We saved up money for a year. And I applied to UNLV as a transfer student
0:20:48
(Speaker 1)
because I was going to a small state school there in Savannah, Georgia, really nice little state school. And that's where I kind of like started coalescing around other student veterans. Because once I started meeting some of them, a lot of them were either coming out of
0:21:00
(Speaker 1)
Honey Army Airfield, out of Ranger Regiment, or they were with 3rd ID there out of Fort Stewart, and just we started hanging out, and I'm like, okay, that made the transition a little bit better because.
0:21:13
(Speaker 2)
Now you found a community of people
0:21:14
(Speaker 1)
that can understand what you went through. That's the thing, I wasn't even expecting that, because I'm like, oh, what do I need to transition for? It's like, because I get back from Afghanistan in August 2011, and I'm in class in September 2011. And I had like 90 days of terminal leave that I used. And so I didn't even think there was going
0:21:31
(Speaker 1)
to be a transition problem. I didn't even think, no, no, no, no. I was all wrong about that stuff. I went through it. And so we saved up for a year, packed up the apartment there in Savannah, came out to Vegas and it
0:21:45
(Speaker 1)
was exactly what needed to happen. And when I get out here, get to the office, do my paperwork, and I was doing VA work study in Savannah. And so when I get to the office here, the Military and Veteran Service Center, I go in there, I'm like, hey, do you guys have work study? I was doing work study for VA in Savannah.
0:22:00
(Speaker 1)
They're like, oh yeah. And then I met Ross, and that was if we get out here in December 2012. So this is January 2013, going into the spring. Meet Ross, and he's like, yep. I think at the time they needed somebody. There wasn't anybody in there, and I started working in office. That's great.
0:22:16
(Speaker 1)
So you were able to find a job and start your schooling again. Yeah, and start my schooling again, and then next thing I know, Ross is a couple weeks later, I don't know, within a month or something. He's like, hey, so we used to have this veteran student organization on campus. Really haven't had anything with the last,
0:22:33
(Speaker 1)
I don't know, year or two. He goes, I want to get it restarted again. What do you think about doing the presidency? I'm like, sure, I didn't do, that I didn't take a chance on myself and I wish I had done that. So when I got out, I was like,
0:22:50
(Speaker 1)
that's not gonna happen again. You need to, if an opportunity arises, you take it and see where it leads you. And so when he said, hey, I want to start to Rebel Vets up again, at the time, a student veteran organization. He was like, do you want to help me? You be the president.
0:23:06
(Speaker 1)
And I'm like, sure. And so from there, but just by saying yes to that, quite literally led me into what I do today as a director. Because of just saying that yes, because everything else after that just coalesced into what my current career is right now.
0:23:18
(Speaker 2)
That's great.
0:23:19
(Speaker 1)
What did you study while you were here? So I initially was gonna do pre-med and I was doing a major in psychology. Staying in the medical field, okay. Yeah, so I was like, whoa, the medic, and I wasn't trying to be a doc, I wanted to be a PA.
0:23:29
(Speaker 2)
Okay.
0:23:30
(Speaker 1)
Because my experience in the Army, the best docs ever worked with PAs, man.
0:23:35
(Speaker 5)
I love PAs.
0:23:36
(Speaker 2)
Physician assistants don't mess around, then.
0:23:37
(Speaker 1)
No, they don't, man. One in particular when I was at Fort Benning, my PA at Fort Benning when I was over at Ranger School just had a huge impact on me. I loved him to death, just a fantastic doc. And so I wanted to be a PA and I was doing majoring in psychology and I found out real quick I'm like, dude, I don't want to do medicine. As much as I love it, to this day I love medicine. I just like, I want to do something different. And then I tried nursing, and I was like, nah, I don't want to do nursing.
0:24:05
(Speaker 1)
And so by that time, I was kind of so far along that if I changed majors completely, I would have been there a lot longer and really would have ran out of GI Bill. So I just dumped everything and just focused on psychology. So if I had to do it again, I'd do it a different route
0:24:18
(Speaker 1)
of understanding what I know now. But at the time, you know, it was the good call to make.
0:24:25
(Speaker 2)
And I'm glad you got to pursue it because you never would have known otherwise that hey, maybe medicine isn't for me. I mean, you're still in a different aspect of medicine. There's a lot of parity between mental health and physical health that people have really come
0:24:40
(Speaker 2)
to appreciate now these days. Seeing that, hey, you're taking care of your mind is just as important as taking care of your body.
0:24:47
(Speaker 1)
And that's why I was doing a major in psychology because I learned that in the Army. I'm like, oh, somebody gets hurt and you're treating their injury. I saw it a couple times, it's like you forget how it affects them on a mental level, right?
0:24:59
(Speaker 1)
Maybe this is a career ender for them and they don't want to get out type of stuff. And then I focused, just did psychology and was a president, I think, for two years from 2013 to 2015. And then we got peer advisor for veteran education on campus out of the University of Michigan. So UNLV was the first 13 pilot schools, was one of the 13 pilot schools. And so when we got paid, it took University of Michigan
0:25:25
(Speaker 1)
and UNLV about a year to get everything worked out. But once we got it, I was the first team lead for that. And that was just, if you're unfamiliar what PAVE is, you show up to UNLV and any other school that might have it across the country. And you have veterans that are peer support advisors that
0:25:42
(Speaker 1)
have been in school for a minute, and they're like, hey, we're happy to have you here, Derek. This is what we got going on. Give us a call if you need something. We're not counselors, but my experience was, we'd have vets come into the office, and they're like, this kid, he was on Facebook.
0:25:55
(Speaker 1)
I'm trying to listen to a lecture. Hold on, bud. Let's go back and have a cup of coffee and they just, a lot of times they just need to word vomit on you, right? You know, just let them get it out. You're like, all right, I'm good, thanks man. They go back to class and.
0:26:08
(Speaker 2)
I haven't had a whole lot of incidents like that, but I was in a lecture class. It was primarily lecture. And some kids behind me would not stop talking. And I was like, this're here to learn this stuff, pay attention to the lecture.
0:26:26
(Speaker 1)
I know, you're paying for it. I think they forget they're paying for it, you know? So, but we had that program's in place. There was one or two vets that would call, called Ross up in the middle of the night, and by extension Ross would give me a call, let me know, they're like, we had one in particular, hey, I just took all my meds and drank a six pack.
0:26:46
(Speaker 1)
Like, all right, stop what we're doing and get them the services they need. So there was once or twice the program came in and was, I think, able to intervene and help that veteran out at a pivotal time in their life. Yeah, so important too.
0:27:00
(Speaker 1)
And all it takes is like a phone call and put them in touch with the right resources at the VA to Help them get through that crisis. Yeah for sure and then From there. I wound up because of that I wound up working with initiatives with our elected representatives Next thing I know I find myself at calls with Congress for our electorate congressmen and senators
0:27:23
(Speaker 2)
What do you what are you advocating for?
0:27:25
(Speaker 1)
So we're advocating for veteran stuff. It was just, they were calling up and wanting to know what issues veterans were dealing with at the time, if there was any on the student veteran level or just veterans in particular. We had worked with Senator Reid for some time, and a good friend of mine, one of my best friends, he's a Marine.
0:27:43
(Speaker 1)
He was my Vice President, he's a Marine, he was my vice president, then he became the president. You know, next thing you know, we're in 2015, Senator Reid calls us up and invites us out to the State of the Union in 2015 as his guest. It was awesome, man.
0:27:54
(Speaker 4)
That's amazing.
0:27:55
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, it was awesome just to be able to experience that. And so I was lucky enough to get involved in a little bit of policy and advocacy, so went out to Capitol Hill a couple times to advocate for veteran stuff, up to Carson City for state-level stuff. So both state and national. Yeah, state and national, and got involved with that.
0:28:14
(Speaker 1)
And so it was really just, like I said, I got out when I was supposed to, man, because I never got involved with that kind of stuff. Yeah, sounds like you never would have got these opportunities. Not at all. Somebody else would have been my doppelganger named Jim or something, you know, wouldn't have been me. So did that and then I graduated in 2016 and I'm glad you're doing this internship
0:28:36
(Speaker 1)
because I found out, and this is for any veterans going through it right now, make sure you take care of yourself because I got so tunnel visioned on every initiative I was involved with the PAVE and Rebel Vets and doing advocacy that I forgot about myself.
0:28:50
(Speaker 1)
So a month out of graduation in 2016, I'm like, holy crap, I haven't done anything for myself. I didn't do any internships. I didn't have a resume built, nothing. And that was a big eye opener because I'm like, dude, I graduated in a month, what am I going to do? I had just focused on everything else
0:29:05
(Speaker 1)
and forgot about myself. So it's OK to be selfish. And you want to do and give back to these initiatives you're working on while you're in school. And I totally advocate for that, because it could set you up. But make sure you're taking care of yourself, too,
0:29:20
(Speaker 1)
because you're not here forever. So, I'm glad you got your internship, man. Like seriously, I advocate big time for veterans to do something, because you use that internship, if it doesn't turn into a job, a lot of times, it'll be on a resume and other employers will like to see that, or maybe your person that you're doing internships,
0:29:39
(Speaker 1)
like we don't have nothing for you, however, I have a friend that's looking for somebody. Oh yeah. You know. It's all about getting in touch and doing those things
0:29:46
(Speaker 2)
that'll make your resume stand out.
0:29:48
(Speaker 3)
Right.
0:29:49
(Speaker 2)
So that leads me to, you got any advice? It sounds like you got any advice for guys that are still serving and vets that are maybe considering going back to school?
0:29:58
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, so understand one, understand your GI Bill benefits and how they work. With the job I currently have with Veterans Upper Bound, I didn't understand it because they weren't briefing it and they're still not doing it because a month ago I had a couple Air Force vets just getting out and I'm like, you guys know how your GI Bill works? They're like, no. They're still not getting briefed that stuff and it's imperative that the veteran understands
0:30:19
(Speaker 1)
how it works. I feel like my TAPS briefing when it came to VA stuff and education was really brief. It's yeah.
0:30:26
(Speaker 2)
I learned a lot just by coming to UNLV and sitting through the orientation that I didn't know.
0:30:31
(Speaker 1)
So with my veterans program, it's a pre-college program in South, it's a federal program out of the Department of Ed. And our job is just to prepare the veteran for college level stuff. It was created in 1972 with all the vets starting to come back from Vietnam. So that's usually what we do on our intake is like, hey, do you know how the GI Bill works? Like, no.
0:30:51
(Speaker 1)
Okay, this is how it works. Here's the details so they fully understand it. And then with that, just going back, you know, really to you, get internships, get involved in some way on campus. We do campus tour for our veterans because we're federal, we don't recruit for UNLV, but we live in Vegas. Most veterans are wanting to come to UNLV. So we'll do campus tours and that's one thing I always push. We'll take them at the end of the tour, we'll take them to lunch and stuff like that at the
0:31:15
(Speaker 1)
chow hall, the dining commons on campus. So if you're gonna be an engineer, there's a student organization on your campus that has to do with student engineers or pre-engineer, pre-professionals, whatever it is, get involved with that, start meeting people because that could lead you into your internship, that could lead you into somebody knowing something
0:31:37
(Speaker 1)
that leads you into your first job. My first job out of UNLV was as an academic coordinator in my other adult program that I have that I'm a director of. And it's quite literally because I met the old director at the time who was a retired Air Force E-8 and she knew I graduated because of Ross and she was looking for a veteran to sit in that position because she wanted to do more outreach to the veteran community in the program.
0:32:00
(Speaker 1)
And it just coalesced. I'm like, oh, and I got that job. And then from there, it, you know, they'd been trying to get this Veterans Upward Bound program here for a long time. I got my master's while I was here, more for professional growth than anything else. And then when we got Veterans Upward Bound, I was the assistant director after Peggy retired and my other assistant director, Carolyn, retired. And then a year later, like, like, hey, we got Veterans Upper Bowel Program.
0:32:26
(Speaker 1)
You're the director of adult education services, go. Right, so I had to build this program. And with the help of my academic coordinator, Antoinette, who is a family member, she was a student working on campus as well. And her dad's a Vietnam vet.
0:32:38
(Speaker 1)
And it definitely, all your prior, I mean you have a load of experience to help you make sure the program is a success. Yeah Yeah, so luckily for working on campus with Ross and a veteranist military service center over there with him and Melissa that are Did benefits and every it's just it paid off dividends for me when it coming into this and getting the program. So Get rid of that imposter syndrome, right, because you'll find out real quick that they're going
0:33:07
(Speaker 1)
to school just like you. So, don't worry about your age. Get involved in some way, shape, or form, and start building that professional career or that networking so you can hopefully lead into some, get an internship, whatever you can do.
0:33:20
(Speaker 1)
If nothing else, try and get a job as a VA work study, you know, on campus with the office or wherever else is that you're at. And if I hadn't done those things, we wouldn't be standing here. So that's awesome.
0:33:31
(Speaker 2)
Thank you so much, Jeff, for talking to me today.
0:33:33
(Speaker 1)
Thank you, man.
0:33:34
(Speaker 2)
I appreciate it. 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 rebelvets at gmail.com. And to my veterans out there, If you want more information about the show or the guest interview, please send an email to rebelvets at gmail.com. And to my veterans out there, thank you for your service and your sacrifice. Until Valhalla.