English teacher Dr. Dani Kachorsky spent 4 years as a military police officer in the reserves. 

“I joined kind of for a myriad of reasons though I would say the primary reason was I came out of high school going to college like I didn’t have a lot of structure … and just generally kind of felt like I didn’t have a lot of like control,” Dr. Kachorsky said.

In retrospect, Dr. Kachorsky said “the army gave me a lot of structures and mechanisms and tools for just how to approach life more generally… I do not think I would have been able to get my PhD if I hadn’t gone through that experience.”

On the other side of this, George Erlandson ’25 who has a brother in the military and who wants to follow in his footsteps, said when his family found out that [his brother] was going to West Point they said that they would support him and whatever he wanted to do. 

At the end of 4 years at West Point “the person he was before going in was a completely different person. His mannerisms and the way he’s just so much more disciplined… I think it’s really set him up good for his future” Erlandson said.

With an important election in the rearview mirror, the way others’ opinions are treated is ever present. And the experiences that someone might go through in the military might give someone a new point of view. 

“When you’re part of that same community and team and you’re serving the same goal none of that stuff [politics] really matters…I think that it it brought on a respect for like the personhood of the individual rather than thinking about, you know, kind of these different groups of people from different places in the United States.” Dr. Kachorsky said.

There is also the importance and pride that comes along with serving one’s country.

Dr. Kachorsky said. “It became a lot more to me than just like I’m doing this as kind of a self-help thing for myself. It was like now I’m part of a system that has a greater purpose…  it meant a lot more than I thought it would when I signed up as a twenty some year old kid.”