One Veteran’s Path Through Higher Education
What’s Important Now: A Veteran’s Transition to College and Civilian Life is the book I couldn’t find when I needed it — in 2017, eleven days after signing my DD-214, sitting in a lecture hall at UNC-Chapel Hill surrounded by eighteen-year-olds on their phones.
Drawing on seventeen years of infantry service, three combat deployments, and an eventual doctorate in history, I write about what veteran reintegration through higher education actually looks like—not the version in the brochures, but the one that plays out in seminar rooms, financial aid offices, and parking lots on football Saturdays. The book covers the full arc: identity disorientation, cultural friction in the classroom, the GI Bill bureaucracy, mental health, family life, and career planning. This project began with various essays throughout college and graduate school.
It is organized around a simple framework—W.I.N., What’s Important Now—that I first learned from a high school football coach and carried through nearly two decades of military service. The transition is harder than anyone prepares you for. It is not linear. It is worth it.
What’s Important Now is available in paperback and hardcover and kindle September 16, 2026.