Growing up in a military family is an experience that has and will continue to shape the person I am. Throughout my entire life, my father has been in the United States Marine Corps. There are various hardships associated with having a parent in the military. However, there are innumerable opportunities that have been presented to me and have created the man I have become. There are so many things that I have been able to do and see with my family thanks to the opportunities that we have been granted.
Throughout my childhood there were numerous hardships that my family faced. Having Dad deployed for months at a time was certainly never easy. My mother is one of the people I look up to most, her personal strength through these deployments has been a source of inspiration for me as long as I can remember. My father missed some important family events such as birthdays and holidays, even my high school graduation. Living in one place for usually only two or three years made it difficult to maintain even the closest relationships. I have seen many good friends come and go. Some of these relationships have persevered, some have not. It's an ugly fact of life. Despite these hardships, there are great advantages to growing up as a military kid.
Moving every few years has made it hard to maintain strong relationships with friends. However, moving so often has led me to some truly remarkable places. I spent most of my years in North Carolina. Some of my other favorites include: Okinawa, Japan (a paradise), Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Southern California and our current home, Alexandria, Virginia. My family has been blessed with the opportunity to see some of the coolest places in the world. I am a big baseball fan, and moving around has allowed me to visit a ton of awesome ballparks. I heavily recommend Baltimore and Kansas City.
Although it was tough to maintain relationships with friends, the ones that have lasted transcend to what I define as true friendship. The friends I've maintained are like brothers to me. Since we graduated, our paths have taken us to every corner of the country. We still manage to maintain contact and talk on a daily basis. Some of the closest relationships that I have are with the friends I have made in my travels. We haven't known each other our entire lives, but there is a definite bond that will always be there. From these experiences I have learned to truly cherish the people I love and am blessed to have in my life.
Growing up in a military family also prepared me for college in ways that I did not even realize until I arrived here at Michigan State. Moving around so much threw me into situations where I had to adapt to new places and people quickly. By the time I was a freshman in Holmes Hall, I was an out-of-state student and knew absolutely no one at Michigan State; a situation I had been in almost a dozen times before fall 2013. The only thing I had trouble adjusting to was the winter weather. I do not think anything would have prepared me for that. The toughest adjustment I had to make was being apart from my family. I have two younger sisters and a younger brother. I would consider my three siblings to me my best friends in the world. The past two and a half years have been tough on us. But with all that we have been through together, there is nothing in the world that could ever come between us.
Looking back, there were definitely some hard times growing up in the circumstances I did. This hardship is a shared experience for military families around the world. However, the benefits from my experience in a military family have far outweighed these hardships, and I am sure many other military kids and spouses would heartily agree.
