- Write about the obstacles you experienced as a college veteran (and how you overcame them), as well as your successes.
- What did/do you like or dislike about your work as a full-time college student compared your work in the military?
- Did/do you feel the academic setting fit/fits your personality well, or did/does it clash with the kind of person you are--your values, your lifestyle, etc.?
- How might the similarities or differences between your work in the military and your work as a student (including the school setting) affect how "smooth" or "rough" your transition felt/feels?
- Feel free to include anything else that you may want to express/discuss about any aspect of your experience as a college veteran ?
Thursday, October 4, 2007. ¶ 9/25/2007 06:47:00 PM 0 Comments
- Discuss how transferable you felt the skills you learned in the military were/are to the skills you needed/need in order to be a successful college student.
- How did your military experience serve as an asset or as a hindrance to school work?
- Discuss the differences between the life you lived in the military and your life as a civilian college student. What did this transition feel like for you?
- Describe the services or programs at your school, if any, that help veterans adjust to civilian life and the academic setting ?
Thursday, September 27, 2007. ¶ 9/18/2007 06:02:00 PM 0 Comments
- Discuss what kind of support, such as transition assistance programs, the military may have offered to help you re-adjust to civilian life, to help alleviate your fears and/or other feelings. Write about how useful you felt these transition programs were.
- Discuss and describe your very last day in the military, including the emotions you were feeling, the setting, the things you did, the things you were thinking about, etc.
- Write about the first few months of your life after your enlistment ended: How did that feel? How did you spend your time? When did you start thinking about returning to school?
Thursday, September 20, 2007. ¶ 9/11/2007 02:50:00 PM 0 Comments
- What were the circumstances that led to your decision to leave (i.e., family, work, satisfaction, money, location, etc.)?
- Include any inner conflicts you may have had about leaving that may have tempted you to stay (what was informing your fears and/or other feelings about returning to the civilian world?).
- What career options were you considering post-military?
- How do you feel now about your decision to leave?
Thursday, September 13, 2007.
¶ 9/04/2007 09:35:00 AM 0 Comments
- Why did you join in the first place? What other career/work options were you considering?
- How long were you in the service? Where were you stationed? What was happening in the world at that time?
- What was your primary duty (include your official title, and be sure to tell us what that means)? Did you like your job you held in the military? Why or why not?
- Did you feel the military and/or your job in the military fit your personality well, or did it clash with the kind of person you are—your values, your lifestyle, etc.?
As I have told you over the phone, and as was stated in the informed consent statement you signed, participation is voluntary, and you have the right to drop out of the study at any time and have any information you may have already provided not be included in my final analyses.
This study will be used as my thesis for my masters degree requirement in psychology. However, it is possible that I may attempt to present the information from the study at conferences and/or attempt to get the study published in a professional journal. Any information about your experience I do utilize will not be identified with your actual identity. I will only refer to you as you assigned codename (so no readers of my final write up will ever know your real identity). And I will be the only person who will ever know the actual identities of each participant, and I will keep the confidential codename list separate and locked away in a filing cabinet.
As we have also previously discussed, there is a possibility you may know some of the other participants in this study, and you may recognize who they are as you read and comment to their blog posts. This means it is impossible for me to ensure your anonymity. However, if you do "recognize" a fellow-participant, it is important that you do not divulge that information in your posts or in your comments to others' posts. Only refer to fellow-participants as their assigned codenames, and only comment on the things they have written in their narratives.
To help protect you identity, I will have absolute control over the individual blog sights that were created in advance for you. All the individual participant blogs were created in my name, so if anyone tries to trace who created your blog, they will be directed to me. Also, complete control of the blogs will allow me to make sure nobody changes the formatting of the blog (which I intentionally formatted to protect your identities as much as possible); and it will allow me to screen any personally identifying information. I will simply provide you with the username and password, so you can access your individual blog (if you forget or lose your username and/or password, just let me know, and I will get it to you again). Also, the things you post on your individual weblogs will not be accessible to the public. Only those involved in the study—fellow participants, my research adviser, and myself—will be allowed access to read what you have written.
It is not my intention to censor you in any way. Please feel free to say or express yourself in any way you like. In fact, if you hold back, the reality of your experience will not be fully expressed, and I won't get accurate information concerning veteran-to-college student transitions. I will only change or delete information that could reveal the actual identity of a participant (and I will be sure to let you know if I make a change and why).
If you wish to continue communicating with a participant (or participants) after the study has ended, let me know. I will then contact the participant (or participants) to see if they feel comfortable exchanging personal information (such as name, email address, phone number, etc.). However, it is important to understand that any personal information shared through email may not be secure.
Finally, it is possible that recalling and writing about personal information that you may not have thought about in a long time may cause you to experience personal or emotional discomfort. If you experience any such discomfort, please contact me or my research supervisor ASAP, and we will be able to assist you in finding the most appropriate help.
On the other hand, writing about difficult personal experiences can also function as a healing process in itself. And the information you provide may contribute to enhanced understanding of the transition process college veterans experience.
If you have any questions regarding anything pertaining to this study, please feel free to contact me at any time.
As you all know by now, through this blog site, you will have the opportunity to write about your experiences as college students and veterans of the
The focus of these stories will be the way in which you transitioned from your military job/culture to your post-military job/culture as full-time college students. The aim of this study is to uncover the potential problems and successes college veterans experience as they make this life-changing transition into the academic setting. It is important that you write about your own unique experiences. Don't try to write what you think I want to hear. Just tell YOUR story--for better or for worse.
It is important that you try to be as accurate and detailed as possible, but don't stress too much about it. Try and have some fun with this, and allow yourself to write whatever comes to mind. You are not being graded for correct grammar or anything like that. And, inevitably, there will be things you will have forgotten. That is fine. That point is, again, to write about your own experiences as you remember them.
As a refresher on how this process works, there will be five specific questions for you to use as the starting point for your story. One of these questions will be posted every week.
Answer the questions as accurately as you can, and try to phrase your responses as a story: the way you remember the events unfolding in your life. As I've indicated, you are free to say whatever you like and even go off on unrelated tangents if you wish (but then try and come back to the original topic). However, I do ask that you write at least one page, approximately 300 words, for each question. There is no maximum limit, so you are free to make your stories as long as you please.
You will be expected complete your own unique narrative (story-format) response to the posted questions one week after the question is posted.
Also within the week in which a question is posted, you should read and comment on at least one fellow-participant's posted response to a question posted the previous week. You can say whatever you want in the comment: maybe talk about the similarities or differences between your experiences, give advice, ask for clarification or elaboration on something that may have interested you, or even just comment on a simple recognition of someone else’s experience.
You are free to comment on whichever participant’s story you want, and your comments don’t have to be particularly long (maybe a short paragraph or two). But, like the narratives, you may make them as long as you wish. Additionally, you may comment to as many of the participants’ stories as you want. And you may comment on any post at any time. For instance, as we progress through this process, you may come across an older response that you may have missed or now find more interesting or relevant for whatever reason. Feel free to comment on that older response any time during the study.
And if you want to comment on someone's comments, feel free to do so. You can keep the back and forth dialogue about a specific question with the same person (or people) going as long as you like.
I may also contact you individually (through email or on the telephone) if there is something you wrote about that I feel needs some elaboration or clarification. I will also be contacting each participant individually as the study progresses to insure that my interpretations of your stories (the themes I find in them) are in-line with your actual experience and intended meaning.
This study is designed to last approximately 5 to 7 weeks. Upon completion of the study, I will analyze the data individually for each participant and collectively for the entire group. I will contact each of you individually after I have finished with my analyses concerning your individual story to verify that my interpretation of your story is consistent with your experience (I will be open to any feedback you may have concerning your individual story).
Finally, I will present all the participants with a collective analysis of the entire group's "transition narrative," again to verify that my perceptions and interpretations are consistent with the group's. Like the individual narratives, I will be open to any comments or critiques that anyone may have of the final group analysis.
Finally, after the study is complete, I will sent each participants an email asked them what the experience of being involved in this study was like (you will email your answer to that question back to me).
Feel free to contact me anytime if you have any questions, comments, or concerns regarding how this process will work.
