Many student veterans have experienced challenges in their college careers. To date, most academic literature on student veterans has focused on aspects of their transition to college, including financial and administrative needs, pursuing connections to other student veterans as an ideal peer group, high-risk behavior, hypervigilance and combat-related injuries (Ackerman, DiRamio, & Mitchell, 2009; Barry, Whiteman, & MacDermid Wadsworth, 2012; Bauman, 2013). Less research, however, has focused on how student veterans experience college post-transition, to include potential impacts of their past military experiences on their journeys as college students.Impressions vary in current literature as to how salient military experience is to student veterans as they progress through college. While some scholars suggest that these experiences erode over time (Naphan & Elliott, 2015), others believe these behaviors shape veterans well after their transition from service to college (DiRamio & Jarvis, 2011; Jones & Abes, 2013). Given the uniqueness of their backgrounds, student veterans require specific programming to serve their needs in college (Barry, Whiteman, & Wadsworth, 2014; McCaslin, Leach, Herbst, & Armstrong, 2013). Despite these acknowledgements, academic literature still largely summarizes military backgrounds, with no identified differences between individuals. An increasing lack of civilian understanding of these experiences (Jones, 2013) creates additional support challenges for this population, as faculty and staff are not being trained to understand the diversity of student veteran experiences (Osbourne, 2014).This study sought to expand the knowledge of student veteran experiences through a thematic analysis of military and college experiences. To accomplish this, qualitative research practices informed by narrative inquiry were used (Claindinin & Connelly, 2000; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016) to guide questions to student veterans about their military and college lives. Participants were a sample of student veterans attending a large, midwestern institution, with defined student veteran support resources. This study offers thirteen participant narratives of military and college experiences. These narrative sketches largely connected to four themes that depict transactional educational experiences for adult learners, comprised of experience gaps with non-veteran stakeholders, college social and cultural challenges, reflections on past military experiences as well as thoughts on the utility of relationships with other student veterans. This work is valuable for practitioners seeking to improve their understanding of student veterans through their military and college experiences.
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