of months I’d moved in with a girlfriend, which pretty much meant live-action insta-porn any time we wanted it.
It wasn’t long before I realized I was running out of money, however. I woke up one morning, went to the ATM to get some cash, looked at my bank balance, and noticed I had less than what I needed for next month’s rent. It only took four months of drinking in L.A. to burn through what little I was able to save from my pittance of a military salary. I had to do something, not just for my savings but for my sanity as well.
So I went to college.
* * *
—
That’s what you’re supposed to do, right? Serve your country, then use the GI Bill to get a free education. Be all you can be, then learn all you can learn. I felt fully capable of attending school and getting a degree. While I wouldn’t say that I was a consciously purpose-focused person at this point in my life (I had no idea what I should major in, for instance), I was certainly mission-focused, so if I approached studying and the course load from that perspective, I knew I’d be okay. Hell, half your job in the military is to sit there and listen to someone lecture you, so I was already 50 percent good to go.
I decided to check out California State University, Northridge (“Cal State Northridge,” for all you diehard Californians out there). It was close to home, I got in-state tuition, and their mascot was Matty the Matador. How could you not go to a cheap school where the mascot is named after you? Even if he is a bull-dodging foreigner in a stupid fucking hat.
My first day on campus was filled with a mix of emotions. There was the typical bout of nerves that comes with having a new experience and being in a new place. There was some excitement at the opportunity for a new beginning. But there was also a healthy amount of fear that, much like the people I met out at the bars in L.A., I would come to absolutely hate everyone and they would hate me right back. It was a reasonable fear. I was older than most everybody who would be in my classes. I was covered in tattoos, which wasn’t the norm back then. And I’d just gotten done fighting a war that pretty much every young person around me loathed and cited as one of the reasons they had voted for Barack Obama, who had just been elected.
My first stop before pulling the trigger on enrollment was the veterans’ affairs counselor in the registrar’s office. A lot of big state schools have one of these people nowadays. It’s a really great service. They help you get your GI Bill paperwork squared away. They help you transfer over credits from any relevant courses you took while you were enlisted. And they help you map out course selection based on what you want to study, even if, like me, you didn’t really know yet. They also give you what amounts to an informal orientation.
“Mat, we’re so excited that you are thinking about pursuing a degree here with us,” the counselor told me. “We try really hard to make our veteran-students comfortable in this different kind of learning environment, because we know how hard this transition can be for some people.”
Do you, now?
“It’s funny. Some of our veterans and our younger students have a lot in common. In many instances, they struggle with the lack of structured days in the same ways.”
The same? Oh, I doubt that.
I understood what the counselor was trying to say, but the way she was couching things made me start to wonder if my initial fears were well founded. Was this place going to be full of intellectual enemy combatants? When our meeting ended, I walked out and headed for my truck, which was parked way on the other side of the campus where I didn’t have to pay for parking. I was nearly broke and I am a natural cheapskate anyway, so I wasn’t about to give these people my money if I didn’t have to. I also figured having to walk across the large urban campus would give me a chance to take the measure of the place.
It met all of my expectations, and not in a good way.
The random snippets of conversation I overheard as I made my way out of the