I'm sometimes asked if I killed anyone. After five years in the military, I have accumulated a range of ready-made responses, ranging from dark humor to simple annoyance, depending on the situation or my mood. Normally, when asked such questions, I simply answer no. I did not join to fight or support the ongoing wars, I had joined to pay my tuition. After serving my time in the military, I found myself back in the classroom. Lately, like many who leave the military to start school, I feel a disconnect between a life that was mine and a new identity as a student veteran. When my classmates ask me about my military life, I begin to feel a gap between them. and me. We are all students, but there is one aspect of my life that seems so different from theirs. The other day I was starting a new class and the professor wanted to do an introductory exercise with our classmates. She asked us to talk to the person we shared an office with about anything we wanted. My classmate and I were discussing what we were doing before going to school. When he found out I was in the military, he had a million questions about the military. Most of these questions were about things he had seen on television or in the movies. This made the already uncomfortable exercise of making small talk with a stranger even worse. The conversation quickly moved from forced questions that we struggled to resolve to embarrassing military questions. Some questions were stupid, like what a Jody is. I happily told him that it was a term used for someone who sleeps with a military spouse, and used mostly in jest. Some had frightening implications for what civilians thought of the military, such as what it felt like to carry a gun on you at all times. I did...... middle of paper ......r different people. In my interactions with others about school, I have discovered that I am not just a student. I'm not like my classmate who confused military movies with real life. I'm not like my friends, who are nearing the end of their studies and establishing their lives. This is my new life and, like many who leave the army, I am learning to make my place in it. On the other hand, I am no longer that soldier and I am new to the student world. I have to integrate my previous life into my new life. Learning to mix veteran with student will be a long-term adjustment process. So I go to class, do my homework, and have a hard time putting my past in the past. Nonetheless, I am a veteran student, and while that comes with a lot of baggage that I wasn't prepared to handle in the civilian world, it still comes with being a student..