Daniel Mateo looks out at the window of opportunity that he made for himself while in the military.
“I was trying to play sports, actually, but I couldn’t because I was behind to grade levels, and so I had to catch up. So, when I did try to play football. But the team wanted me, I wanted to play, but I couldn’t because I was two grades behind. So I had to play catch up”
“But I did graduate on time. That’s, I think that’s an important part”.
My first contract I was pretty much like yeah I want to get out in four years so no i didn’t see myself doing seven years in the military.
“And so that explains how great the teachers are and she actually took a time out to sit down with me. Teach me. Help me to pass all my tests. If you need any help. They will help you”.
“when I saw that, like how the effort that she’s putting into me that she didn’t have to because when school was over, she could have just left home she helped me understand”.
“it was tough, It was tough. I was thinking, I’m like, Man look what I got myself into. But it’s funny because I had too. It was more like I had to join the military because I couldn’t get into college, because of financial aid. Financial Aid problems, so I just joined the army and I felt like that was the fastest route. The first week kind of hit me like I’m doing this I’m already thinking about something different, a whole different life. I just started a whole different life”.
“transitioning into civilian life is some stuff it started funny for some stuff could be far more funny for us like it just changes like the way we think”.
“Sometimes you can’t relate to a lot of people, sometimes you can even talk about it because you cannot relate to becasue your whole life you’ve been living in the military”.
“It’s just a different lesson Honestly, I don’t want to bring it back to education and stuff but to be honest, I feel like I learn more and more the right things of history, When you actually go to the country and actually start meeting the people and start talking about it and just normal people like people that really know about the history. They teach you there so, you learn all this stuff and it just blows your head because it’s like I was thinking, wow, but I couldn't learn this in the United States”