Hi everyone. I hope you all are doing well. I wanted to take a moment to describe my experience as a Tuck student who recently transitioned from the military to life as a civilian student. As I may have mentioned before, I served in the Marine Corps for eleven years before returning to graduate school to pursue a new career. My military experience included extensive aviation training, deployments to the Middle East to participate in combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and testing new military technology. Despite having accumulated a unique set of skills during my service, I was unsure about how my background would be received and valued by business school administrators and students.
Three things convinced me that Tuck holds military experience in extremely high regard. The first indication is the incredibly generous Yellow Ribbon benefits that Tuck offers for those who are eligible. Last time I checked, Tuck leads all top business programs in the financial resources that it makes available to US military veterans.
The second experience that convinced me of how strongly Tuck values my background is the way I was received by the administration and my fellow students. During my first week at Tuck I stopped in to speak to Dean Sally Jaeger about an issue with my course selection. Without having spoken to me before, Sally welcomed me by my first name, thanked me for my service, and shared with me the military service that members of her family have rendered our country. At that moment I knew I had arrived at a place that cared about veterans and valued each student individually.
Finally, my Tuck classmates have demonstrated genuine interest in my experience and gratitude for what I have done. They have also been very generous with their time to help me get up to speed on many of the business concepts that I was encountering for the first time during Fall A. (A great example of this generosity occurred when T’14 Ben Hall walked me through the basics of financial statement analysis during our second week of school.)
I am also lucky to be part of an active veterans’ community at Tuck. It is great to have a group of fellow students who speak the same language that I do based upon our common military background. We are dedicated to advancing veterans’ causes in the Upper Valley by partnering with the non-profit organization Team RWB and personally connect with prospective Tuckies interested in learning if Dartmouth is the best place for them. These activities have allowed us to continue serving in our local community and speak to the culture of personal engagement that exists at Tuck.