Military Culture and Veteran Transition with Dr. Carl Castro

Welcome back! In the first episode of 2025, Dan is joined by Dr. Carl Castro, professor and director of the Military and Veteran Programs at the University of Southern California.

Join in on the conversation as Dan and Dr. Castro dive into military culture and the  transition from military to academia. Dr. Castro emphasizes the importance of military identity in the transition process and introduces his military transition theory, highlighting the challenges veterans face as well as advice for service members on maintaining their hustle and adapting to civilian life.

Special Guest: Dr. Carl Castro

USC Military & Veteran Programs

Cohen Veterans Network

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Episode Overview
• 2:40 Why Dr. Castro Joined the Military
• 11:20 Transitioning to Research in the Military
• 16:45 Comparing Military and Academic Cultures
• 22:30 Understanding Military Culture and Identity
• 27:10 The Military Transition Theory Explained
• 33:00 Challenges of Transitioning to Civilian Life
• 38:40 Key Advice for Veterans

Transcript

0:00

[Music] Broadcasting from the most beautiful city in the world, I'm your host, Dr. Dan Cox, a professor of counseling psychology at the University of British Columbia. Welcome to episode number 33 of Psychotherapy and Applied Psychology, where we dive deep with the world's leading applied psychology researchers to uncover practical insights, pull back the curtain, and hopefully have a little bit of fun along the way. If you find our show helpful or interesting, be much appreciated for you to share it with someone you know who might enjoy it too. It's a great way to spread the word and keep the conversation going. Today I can be more excited to welcome one of the world's authorities on military and veteran mental health. My guest is a professor and director of the military and veteran programs at the Suzanne Dwork Peck School of Social Work at the University of Southern California. Before joining the University of Southern California, my guest served in the US Army for over 30 years retiring at the rank of Colonel. He completed two tours in Iraq as well as serving on peacekeeping missions to Saudi Arabia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. He's chaired numerous NATO and international research teams, and he is currently chair of a NATO research group on military veteran transitions and co-chair of a team exploring the development of military and veteran radicalization. He's been a full bright scholar and a member of several Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs Advisory Boards. In part one of our conversation we discuss several aspects of the military and veteran experience, including military culture, military identity, transitioning from military to civilian life and much more. This episode starts with my guest responding to my question about why he joined the military. So without further ado, it is my pleasure to welcome my very special guest, Dr. Carl Castro. I mean I joined the military for education. I mean there's nothing I didn't join because I was super patriotic although I am super patriotic. That isn't why I joined there. Lots of people who were patriotic who've never served in the military. So you know, my brother was in the military. He was in the army. That's why I picked the army over and in the other services which is terribly different than why other people joined. Sometimes people joined to be different than their dad. So their dad was in the Marines and they joined the army. The dad was in the Navy so they joined the Air Force or something like that. But I don't have any unique stories about that other than you know it was the chance for education. I come from a very poor background and so this was a way to get a college education and quite honestly I was just looking for a one or two year scholarship and I got a four year scholarship and with the four year scholarship came a commitment to serve longer which I didn't know. I was very naive about all of that. So I sort of stumbled through how I got to where I got even when I got my PhD I went to the green to gold program and I was actually volunteer at the time they are having trouble getting people to join. Now it's highly competitive but when I went they couldn't get people so they basically sent down a task into battalion saying cough up two soldiers and my first sergeant came to me and said"Caster you're going to become an officer." You're going to the green to gold program. That's how you ended up then I got to college and I thought wow I really like this and said what how can I stay and then you could get a PhD but you could only get a PhD in certain areas and psychology was one of them so I went to psychology that's how much thought I put into this and and then when I was I got my PhD I called up because I was branch branch transfer or branch transfer to the infantry and I called my main to a branch officer and I said yeah this is Lieutenant Castro I'm ready you know because I was commissioned I said I'm ready to come back on active duty and he goes oh great I said got my PhD and finishing up in the spring in the main he goes oh great would you degree it and I said psychology and literally on the phone my career manager goes what in the fuck did you do that for and I was like and he goes now you're going to go into the medical service corps I didn't even know what the medical service corps wants and so he transferred me over and the guy picked that goes he goes to the Castro welcome glad to have you show us from this anger to this and then from there I went to San Antonio and you know so the whole thing was just complete naive you know no why did me want you to get your degree in psychology well I guess because once you pick a certain degree that means you're going to be in a certain branch and since I had a PhD in psychology that's a medical service corps I didn't know that when I picked psychology I just said well that was the only one they would give me a delay to continue school for that's why I picked it and and so goes now you're going to become a medical service corps so I did I went to basic officer basic corps at San Antonio and then started my research career in the in the medical service corps side then you know just continued to work hard and you know publish and do all of that and so when I was getting ready to leave active duty you know the academic position opened up that I was qualified for so I was hired at University of Southern California so but none of that was planned so so okay so what's the green to gold why I don't know what that is I mean I sort of got it based on what you said but the green to gold program is it is a program for enlisted soldiers to become officers because what it happened is there are a lot of battlefield commissions and a lot of folks who enlisted who became officers during World War II and these now the folks who are junior officers now we're senior officers and they thought the problem one of the problems with the leadership among the officers is not a knock of them had enlisted experience they forgot or didn't know what it was like to be a soldier so they wanted more officers with that experience so they created this green to gold program and say yeah let's do this program and nobody wanted to do it and so they said okay well we're going to just gonna in typical army fashion you're going to be violent told so technically I volunteered for but I was ordered you were you were doing this so that's classic army culture by the way it's classic military culture where you are violent told that if you've ever heard that phrase before but that's what it's called it's fallen told you it's like you're volunteering to do this right yeah yeah right I'm volunteering I'm not volunteering I'm being ordered to do this but what am I going to say no so just because because there probably will be some listeners who don't know just real quick sort of a commission versus no no no no no what can you say that because this is going to be important the difference between a commission and a non-commissioned officer yeah so the enlisted soldiers you have to have basically either a high school degree or the graduate education diploma which is the equivalent the GED and officers must have a college degree to be an officer now there are a lot of enlisted with college degrees who are non-offices because they didn't want to be an officer they they wanted to be an enlisted soldier but the officers you know when you think about it from the officers are the ones who plan missions plan operations the enlisted soldiers are the ones who execute the operation that's that's the big difference and there's a heck of a lot more enlisted than there are officers but right so commission are kind of the managers yeah they're the manager the ones that become the generals and the admirals and and the enlisted are the ones that become the you know command master chiefs and commands hard majors that's that's the that's the that's the career path and of course you get paid a lot more as an officer right which I always kind of knew but didn't fully appreciate but you get paid a lot more as an officer than you do so how did you end up getting down the research track so because I had a PhD you could do clinical or you could do research there are very few research pure research positions in the military and and I got tracked early on because they needed someone at the insta if you see from my CV they needed someone at the institute of chemical defense this is how much thinking the military puts into it they needed someone to run their non-human primate laboratory and they go oh well this guy's a psychologist that we're primates this is close enough I know experience running a not even primate lab but that's how much thinking goes into this so I got and then of course I'm one of these people I'd love to learn new things so I just immersed myself and became an expert for you know four or five year period and non-human primates and you know about the ecology and all of that stuff around them how to care for them and all of that kind of stuff but that's and so I got that job and I did so well in it that they just continued to track me then I would do kind of these four days of more psychological hell hell mental health stuff along the way but primarily you would say my main bold track was I was a clinical a clinical researcher if you will clinical psychology researcher is is what I did and and of course that set me up for academia and if you would have asked me when I accepted this academic job one week before I was offered it hey what about going into academia when you lose a no-tank? not only where I've said no I just said hell no but zero interest in that it best decision I ever made in terms of career was I absolutely love it it's a phenomenal job I love what I do I thought being in the military was the best job I ever had not the best job I ever have is the one I have right now it's a great job it's a great job it gives me lots and lots of freedom to pursue lots and lots of different things which I didn't I pursued a lot of different things in the military but not nearly to the extent that I'm dying now and was that somebody did somebody can because you said you would have said hell no so did did somebody convince you? well the dean at the time at the school of social work they were looking for somebody to help with their research looking at transition and of course I studied transitions in on active duty so transitioning into the military transitioning to deployments transitioning home from deployments that really the overarching framework in which I worked and so this was just the other the back end of the transition transition you should mean out of the military so it was a real natural extension in good fit for what I done in the military so it was one of those rare situations where the exact same thing or content I was doing while I was on active duty was applicable post military service so it wasn't a complete new career in fact I would almost argue was a continuation of my military career one could argue that and and and I was I remember talking to the dean I said you know one of the interesting things about academia in the military is they are both medieval institutions they were both developed during the medieval times that by the way in the clergy and so there are similarities between all three of these professions with the robed and the uniforms and the formalities and you know so in that sense it also made my transition easier because it was kind of like moving from one medieval institution to another with so you know some important difference it's a different culture and the in the traditions are different and you know some universities you know professors still lecturing gowns at least in academia we only do it at commencement and graduation we look to worry where them all the time but but there's still you know and and of course rank is still important in academia although we like to pretend it's not right we don't wear our rank on our collar but the clergy where they're rank in their uniform like their gowns they wear in the robes they wear in in military it's the rank and insignia on your uniform so there's a lot of the I always had this I don't know forever right but I'm always going to write this paper about how the military the church and academia are similar and because you know a lot of people like try to make you know the elitism in academia but there's elitism in the military and there's elitism in the church too right you know if you're deacon or bishop or cardinal or the pope or you know there's there's so there's these hierarchies that are very formal and you know in the Catholic church you literally kiss the ring you know in the military you salute and in academia you kind of act like it doesn't matter but it didn't really matter when it comes to getting good teaching assignments in good office spaces and things like that so it matters all of this stuff matters so you know they're just different but I was going to like total here's how they're similar here's how they're different but we've got more probably more similarities than differences this is a really more superficial and that's what I was going to ask you because we're going to get into talking about military culture and transition these sorts of things and I was when I was going to ask you was well I guess when you were talking I was thinking about what the differences are culturally between the military and academia and one of the questions I was going to ask you was you know what is it like because the military is you know overtly hierarchical right I mean it is clear and it is intentional and then I was thinking like well the you know you know the universe or academia isn't but then I sort of started thinking about it as you were talking and I was sort of thinking like in a way it isn't right because in a way day to day I can do what I want to do I can study the things I want to study I have academic freedom I have a tremendous amount of latitude in what I teach and how I teach it but in other ways it really is hierarchical also and so I guess well so sorry go ahead. The highest paying jobs in academia or what administrative jobs yeah the dean then the president yeah they're not the end if you look at the growth of academia most all of the growth in personnel have been at the administrative level not at the faculty level right and you know so when people want to talk about what's driving up the cost of academia and I want to get into this topic on this podcast but it's it's the it's the growth of the administration the cost and the growth of the administration is you know it's I think the last number a 20 fold increase whereas the number of students and faculty are almost on top of each other but all the administrative overhead right and those are the the I'm not going to say the pointless stop some people would say that administration is really important you have to question whether or not we need that much administration you know at least I would question that but others may say oh no we could justify but but one of the things I always tell my faculty I said I had more input into decisions when I was in the military than I do as a professor at the university wow by a bunch it wasn't like let's just ask the faculty what they want us to do and we'll do whatever we want anyway we'll just go through the motions of getting input in the military they really wanted to hear what people had to say because people were experts whereas in academia are president and I by the way I discovered this is new to our university but I'm just picking on our university because I know at the back they will hire a consultant to do a survey of faculty when you have expert surveyors that are in the university who could do it for like free or you know a course release some minimal amount of money but no you'll spend two three million on a consulting company to do what you have the experts at your university it's just you don't trust them so because you want to control the messaging and you know if the faculty get it they could just share it and so there's this real lack of trust in academia that you don't see in the military and there's a more you know it's more in its in an in a crazy way the military is more democratic than academia and and I think it's the horseshoe phenomenon you know the horseshoe in the political spectrum where really conservative and really progressive folks there's horseshoe starts bending towards authoritarianism opaqueness don't second-guess my decision the military's built to second-guess decisions we call those after-action reviews after every military operation you critique it what what wrong what went right how did it go wrong you never see that in academia I've never been part of an a true after-action review where something was a terrible decision was made how did we get here how can we learn from it in fact more often than not faculty aren't even included in that decision and so in some ways I say the military is more democratic than the supposedly progressive inclusive environment so it's you know but on the surface because if you look at the progressiveness in the new ideas that come out of of the universities you think oh everybody's buried this free thinking highly inclusive people but they're really not I mean academia really don't like new ideas and they don't like ideas that counter the norm right whereas in in the military there is sort of a group think because you tend to promote people who think like you in in academia they hire people think like you so the promotions are like per font or in the military it more egalitarian from the blue tenet up you get this broad and then there's this funneling of sort of if you will I don't know to in the line so to speak so you have to sort of fit in and you know do you think like an officer do you act like an officer you know in an academia it's how inclusive are you you know in your thinking and and if you're too inclusive like if you include people we want to exclude then your your thinking is considered radical right and so it's it's that's the part that's different at the deeper level right but there's also you know and rank is really important I mean anytime you talk to someone in academia you only have to talk to them for like 10 seconds and they'll tell you they're a full professor right it's it's like because I can't tell right from just looking at you so you want me to make sure that I know that you're a full professor and you've been here for 25 years you know it's that kind of they were in the military in the veteran you know like I said how can you you know I you know I write these sort of stupid one-liner jokes and I said how can you tell if if someone's a veteran they'll tell you usually just for men though women are like there's some differences between men and women veterans but but a man will tell you in like 10 seconds the third veteran they'll come right up to you if they find out that I'm a veteran you'll come right up tell me they're a veteran where they served and all that stuff totally I don't even have fascinating they'll just share all that information and it's very similar to academia you because people want to know I got a grant they'll tell you about that and you know so it's because I how else will I know that it unless you tell me so I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that but there is this sense of bravado if you will in academia because I can't tell from your uniform what your rank is and where you've been you got to tell me just like a veteran will have to tell me but if you were on active duty in uniform I could just look at your uniform and tell so much about you that I don't have to ask a lot of questions because I can see oh your rank do I aren't ranking do you aren't ranked me I can see how many awards you've had where you've been based on the awards you have so good tell a lot about a person just for looking at their uniform you can't tell that an academia in the veteran because they have to tell you that and veterans aren't really good sometimes at bragging and telling you all the things they've done and so that can make it a challenge too for them because it's you know it's if you talk about it too much then people get suspicious on how good you are right and I find myself the same way we'd academia and someone's telling me about all of their academic accomplishments I immediately get suspicious if whether or not I'm getting the real version you know versus like really you know you know I get what faculty member who who always tells me always tells me I've been in NIH funded consecutively for 27 years right he tells me that and I know it's not true but he says that to me anyway and I and I said you know and I always want to say why I always want to say is I never do because he's a good colleague I said why are you saying that you know that's not true I know for a fact that you had five years with no grants but what do you tell me you continuously funded you know I almost want to say you're not talking to your wife or the dean you know you're talking to somebody who knows your record it's and it doesn't need any way to manage him I mean he's got a beautiful career but why do you have to invalid shit like that just anyway so those kinds of things you see in the military too you know so so let that because I think we're sort of like dancing around it and I kind of think we should jump into it because I in talking about military culture and talking about like those and I know that you sort of push back on this idea of like military as a subculture rather than just like military as a culture so I'm wondering I don't know the best way into this conversation but perhaps you can just sort of like because we're one of the things that's going to be worth people hearing about are trying it is trying to better understand military culture and probably in particular the types of things that folks are going to struggle with as they transition into civilian life yeah exactly and that's what and that's what led me by the way to this is what are those things that make it challenging and as you know one of the things that just recently not recently meaning in the last seven or eight years that really has been fully now appreciated is your military identity is really important in how that shapes the transition well what is identity identity is how you relate to your culture whether it's it's your race or your gender or your ethnicity or where you come from right it it's how you think about things it's how you feel about things it's the word you use your vocabulary drives how you think about things and and the biggest challenge that service members have is trying to be the way they were in the military which made them successful and that won't make them as successful as a civilian because civilians think differently and and you know the bravado is minimize the teamwork is what's emphasized in academia it's all about what I've done not what my team has done that what me and my colleagues have done but what I have achieved right and and in the military you're promoted based on individual achievements it's just like you are in academia but in academia that's the language people use I published this paper I published this book I got this ground not we got this ground I published this paper with you know you in the military it's a very we team caught vocabulary we're in academics a very me vocabulary to I mean centric vocabulary and and that's one of the biggest things that but that's not unique to academic you see that in the American culture in general so this is why okay this is a culture difference now we're not talking about a subculture difference we're you talk about what the team accomplished and when we all reflect on it we realize you've got a lot of help to be successful right that a lot of people help us be successful and both in the military the folks I work with it University of Southern California all made me successful you know and contributed to my success so I do like that's one of the big cultural differences is the eye versus we I think so I think so I think so now each service is a little different the air forces more eye in me than than the the army in the Marine Corps are and I think that comes from one of the key nature to the job like piloting is about you as a pilot right you don't and when they've done away with cold pilots it is about you and what you've done and you know so and even in academia somebody has to be PI on a grant right somebody has to be first author on a paper or senior author on a paper right so it's part of it is the cult but I would argue that was built because of the culture not the other way around you know like the dean doesn't know like do you for a while went through doing multiple PI awards because do you recognize that you get recognized being a PI so they would do multiple PI awards the dean doesn't the dean are they didn't know what to do with that so what am I supposed to do that who gets credit for the grant and she couldn't get her hand around well both of us get credit for the grant that's what the multiple PI award means to go to I don't know what that means because it's the deep culture of one person's gonna get credit for this grant you know not two you know that was the that the sort of thinking and I can't get it I get it you've been around the entire your entire life with that thinking you're not just gonna what group chains that thinking overnight they want one person who's the PI not does multiple PI stuff they understand like multiple site PIs but they didn't understand if you're at the same place how you could have multiple that same thing so you develop this what you call military transition theory which is sort of a way of framing the sort of the transition process if you will and I was thinking that that sort of if you give us like an overview of that general model that that could be helpful for people in terms of thinking about what some of the normal challenges that veterans might experience are sure the you know transitions are not unique right I don't think enough time is spent on transitions are understanding transitions because when things go wrong in life they're usually around transitions right so if you and also opportunities so things can go bad but things can really go better sort of key transitions that we all go through well hopefully we all go through and that is moving how do your parents home right now I know that there's some people who want who now move to the basement but that's not what I'm talking about like moving now and starting you know living on your own getting married huge transition huge it even bigger one is having kids nobody really understands having kids until you have a kid it's not the same as having three cats and a two dogs they're very different very different things so these are all major transitions and you know and and when things can you know you're happy about many of these transitions but there's also fraught with problems right they can you can starting a new job is a transition going away to colleges a new transition joining the military that's a transition from being a civilian to being in uniform and then transitioning into deployments changing jobs in the military we change jobs on purpose there's no such thing as a 40-year-old private we don't allow that every but we have an upper-out system most people don't even appreciate that about the military that if you don't get promoted you get kicked out kind of like academia right yeah if you don't get the one promotion gone these are similarities by the way between the military now you don't have to become a full professor but in in the military if you if you make usually it's the rank of major lieutenant carnal then you can stay in retire at those rings we have to make several promotions same thing with the enlisted enlisted personnel so they have to make so many promotions or they get kicked out so this upper-out system and then we have mandatory retirement you know and it's usually you're usually around 50s and you have to go so everyone then needs to should be thinking what am I going to do when I leave the military because that's an important thing very few people can retire at 50 certainly in the military you're going to have to do something else and so this is why this big emphasis now in the military has been for some time about preparing for your life after the military what are you going to do what do you want to do and that's a hard question because if you join the military straight from living with your parents you don't know what it's like to visit civilian you know I and I jokingly say that there are two major socialist systems in America and I know we don't like to call them socialist because socialism is bad right ooh bad evil but the family is a socialist system right I have to provide for my kids food clothing shelter education whether they contribute anything or not to the Castro household I got to provide for them you join the military in the military provides everything for you housing food clothing healthcare everything part of the package that socialism we don't call it that what it is it's unlimited healthcare unlimited dental care you banks through commissaries there's the dining facilities barracks housing allowance all that's provided if that's all you know when you leave the military your 30 40 50 years old you really don't know what it's like to live and compete for an apartment to how much things even cost because they are provided for you and this can get in the way of the transition too because you're not you think it's going to be easy because you know you went to combat you served through combat tours and you're a senior in CO or you're a field grade officer and you come out you say oh my goodness there's a lot of decisions I have to make that I never really thought about because other people are making them for me but for you had to be what uniform you had to be in what you were doing that day and so being an academia it's a complete opposite of that where you well I don't even know if I'm going to go into the office today right the the military you're going to go to work every day because someone's going to be holding a formation and seeing if you're there there's a real accountability and so you develop this sense of accountability in the military and you often see a lack of accountability among your civilian counterparts right so this this can lead to clashes of culture in art and like culture you show up on time in the right uniform prepared to work hard until you're dismissed and academia for example you you have flexibility if you as long as you teach your classes you're in your class where you're supposed to be you don't see anything outrageously insulting to anybody you're going to be a pretty good shape you're going to be in pretty good shape otherwise the dean will leave you alone so those are really important uh being to meetings on time is like really important in the military you know we have a saying in the army that if you're 10 minutes early you're on time it academia people show up late all the time for meetings in fact that was one of the first things I got in trouble for when I when I uh came to the University of Southern California or being a meeting and one of the things too an academic day schedule crazy long meetings and it was two hour meeting and faculty member comes in 40 minutes late of a two hour meeting and the chair and I don't mind that you know I got used to people showed up late especially in California and the chair stopped the meeting and started telling the person who showed up late everything that we had discussed and so I get up to leave and the chair goes car where you going and I said well I was here I know what was said at this meeting I'm going to go get a coffee and she goes well how will you know when to come back I said well if I miss anything you can just update me like you're doing him and she told the dean on me for that I got in trouble the dean goes you can't be to your colleagues like that you need to be more respectful you're doing your faculty that kind of and it was inappropriate admittedly in in retrospect but I was just irritated it happens all the time and then after that I started gradually changing the culture in our school where people would text me and say come I'm going to do two minutes late I'm sorry you know being on time is important and starting a meeting on time and ending on time is important and there was visibly a change where people would start meetings on time and they say being conscious time we're going to stop on time and because in academia we don't know how to stop a meeting early we just we'll fill the time because it's there even though well we made an hour but we're really done in 20 minutes we're like keep going because we don't have a stop of meeting and but anyway those are things that is a culture difference between the military and academia and well what jumped out in your story real fat what jumped out in your story is that you because of your position because of your personality because the context you were working in you were actually able to change the culture somewhat to come to you yes right that like people but that's not like that that is that that has to be less common than common right that has to be the minority of cases so I'm thinking about the other service member who retires and goes into civilian life and they're just in a situation where the thing that was driving you up a wall is driving them up a wall you had the personality in the context and the ability to change it but they don't and if they're stuck in this kind of hell experiencing that regularly and I think people like to start meetings on time I think everybody like who has to go to a meeting wants to start on time if I go to a concert that's supposed to start at six o'clock I'm not happy when it starts at 6.40 when sitting there for 40 minutes why aren't we started on time right and and then of course now you know it's gonna go late and people have maybe add plans afterwards or you have to leave because you have another meeting right after the one that now is running over because it didn't start on time so I think most people like to start meetings on time I find that a lot of things that I say in your spot on half the other group stinkin the same thing I'm dissaiding it out loud and but you're right you have to be in a position where you can do that or you could get in trouble and because one of the things that that you know human nature some people carry grudges they wait to pay you back for making them look bad publicly or a comment you made and of course that's not why you make the comment you just want if this person missed something they could read the minutes next week we've got somebody here taking minutes why are we stopping the meeting you know in your wasting everybody's time who was there on time you know so and then that just feeds itself to then everybody being late because you know you're not gonna start on time this meeting never starts on time I can show up five to ten minutes late I won't miss anything and so that just sits I think is the wrong culture to have in any organization and you know I I always get a little time in trouble because I'll ask someone will be chair in a meeting and I'll say or any decisions gonna be made at this meeting I always ask that ahead of time and now in academia academics don't like to make decisions so this is another culture difference where the military especially the army we want to make decisions and the army they'll make decisions without all the information they'll make a decision where in academia they'll want information information and more information than you would ever need to make a decision so that's a big culture difference so but I do ask is there any decisions that are going to be made and if only because if there is I want to know if there's something I need to read and understand before the meeting before we make the decision I don't want to like have a vote on an issue that I haven't thought about and that I've not read the background information on otherwise you're gonna probably make a bad one in academia probably won't matter that much but still we need to get in the habit of we're gonna make a decision it should be on the agenda we are going to decide these things at this meeting or it's just gonna be an information meeting and because it's just gonna be an information meeting I'm not even sure I want to go you know something and I think that's why they don't want to tell me ahead of time because they know I probably won't show up if I tell them there's no decision being made so but if it's sharing information it's important and I'm not saying it's not but it's like if we're gonna make a decision let's make that decision or know about it before or not decide to make it during the meeting as we're discussing it that usually leads to bad bad decisions like so what do you think in the US what are the things that you've seen either through the military through other services programs that are or supports or whatever that help service members make the transition successfully you know I don't have a favorite organization because I think there are lots of great organizations out there one of the things that I tell you know like if I can only tell it's separated service member one thing what would the advice be and it was almost the advice I would give to anyone how they should conduct their entire life never lose your hustle never lose your hustle everything's a competition you have to compete for the job that you get when you leave the military no one's just gonna give you the job because you serve four combat tours they're not gonna do that you've got to show how what you can do can contribute to their organization so just don't lose your hustle realize that in every day wake up what are you gonna accomplish today don't rest on your past laurels you got to keep moving forward just like an academic you know I've published a hundred papers well how many did you publish last year right that's the criteria for the evaluation for your annual performance review it's called annual performance review not lifetime performance review so you want to know what is your accomplishments in its every year you should have some very concrete goals of what you're going to achieve so don't lose your hustle and if you start losing your hustle you start slowing down you're not producing anything then in academia you're called deadwood and in the military they call it you know somebody's just waiting on retirement right they're just marking time until they retire it's that every organization has names for people who do that and and you know don't don't be like that if you want to be a contributor just be thinking okay what is the boss value what is the the the organization value that I'm at and do those things that they value and you're gonna be successful but don't ever expect something to be given to you because of something you've accomplished in the past I just think that's the most fundamental thing now one of the challenges most veterans have our service members have when they leave the military is they don't really know what they want to do they know what they don't want to do they don't want to do what they did in the military about 70 80 percent want to do something different so I would love to see organizations help separating service members help figure that out like okay what do you want to do let's talk about what you're interested in what your skills are whether or not you need to go back to the university or a bow tech school or get some additional credentials that will help them transition better if they know what they want to do and that's I mean that's necessarily what they're gonna do for the rest of their life I mean anyone has been to the university I mean how many what's the average number I haven't looked at this data in a while but when I was an undergraduate I think there were four different majors on average that everybody had before they picked right right so you change because you don't know you think you know what you want to do and then you go to the university go I didn't even know this was a possibility I want to do this and you learn something else then you're over here right so that's normal that's not abnormal that's typical and it's similar with jobs and and and service members leave in the military they're not really sure what they want to do they think they know what they want to do if they're not 100% sure but helping them dig your that out up front will help in the long term so they're not going to go to the university and start a program that they're not interested in but now they're already committed to in those kinds of things so and because they also feel veteran feel they're already behind their peers because they got to start over and this is one thing that's hard for a lot of people you serve in the military you know for 10 years five years you get out and you feel you're behind your high school classmates who went right into work and you know I tell my own story you know not that leaving active duty moving into academia is a sad story it's a great story but I started out as an assistant professor it although under any other if you looked at my CV at the time you said no you should be a full professor I didn't start out as a full professor why not because the university didn't know me from Adam they didn't want to make me a full professor and then I just retire on a spot and never work again because once you get tenure then what's my motivation and I got rapid promotions I made full professor in about six years so they'd solve you know you get credit they want to see if you got a game right they want to see if you still got it you still you're still hustling that's what they're looking for are you still hustling to get grants right paper do research make a contribution make an impact all of those things and and I don't I understand why they did that I probably would be you know on the other side be thinking similarly but you could say well they're not appreciating all my accomplishments and that would have been an accurate statement too but are you going to dwell on that waste energy there or spin that energy show them what you can do right kind of like a veteran player leaving one team moving to another teams still showing them you got it right it's you've got to do that that's what that's what all organizations are looking for they don't want to hire someone he's only going to work one or two years and then stop working sort like those you get tenure and then stop working I don't know somebody told me there was a study where they looked at the number of publications before and after tenure you know five years before and five years after and it was like a drop of like 40 percent in productivity not enough that true I could never find that paper by the way and so I don't know if that's just sort of the cat in the microwave but it does kind of resonate with some anecdotal stories I know about faculty you know when once you you get comfortable you don't hustle as much and I would just say never get too comfortable always be hustle always be looking you know how can you contribute and it could be writing a research paper it could be serving on a committee could be chair in a committee doesn't have to be the same thing but you always want to feel that your contributing and people around you feel your contributing that's that's what I mean when I say don't use your hustle obviously the older you get you're going to write pure grants and you'll be fewer first author papers I'm rarely first author on any papers anymore that's just part of the senior natural progression and academic there's nothing wrong with that but then you should be doing other things you should be chairing committee you should be writing books and talking about your life and your memoirs and those kinds of that's that's what you have time to do before you clunk over right I mean because then last forever but you want to enjoy what you're doing so I always tell folks to you know I enjoy know what you're doing find something else to do don't quit find something first I'm told that's old-fashioned thinking by the way then you know having a job before you quit your job I'm told that's old-fashioned thinking so I'm an old-fashioned thinker because I think before you quit a job you should have another job not quit and then fight a job that's just me I guess I am old-fashioned then if that's old-fashioned I but I do think that so I have some old-fashioned thinking as well are there when you internationally are there things that you see countries military's governments doing to facilitate their their soldiers transition or their their service members transition that you go oh wow that's really that's really good I will tell you this and and I sometimes get in trouble internationally because I say this that's a wrap on the first part of our conversation about the military and veteran experience join us in our next episode when we dive deep into military and veteran mental health as I noted at the top it'd be much appreciated if you spread the word to anyone else who you think might enjoy this show until next time