Jessica Santiago

Jessica Santiago-Slater '10 joined the Army National Guard while still in high school. “I just wanted to be part of the military,” she says. “I was interested in criminal justice, particularly the criminal profiling that the FBI does. I thought that some experience with the military police would help me get started.”

After graduation, Santiago-Slater enrolled at American University. Since she was living in Washington, D.C., she transferred from her Massachusetts-based unit to one in the District of Columbia. In December of her first semester that unit was activated for Homeland Security. Instead of experiencing life in a campus dorm, Santiago-Slater found herself living in a barracks at DC's Bolling Air Force Base. She withdrew from college and spent the next 12 months proving base security, checking ID,s and ensuring proper access at the gates.

“I then transferred back to my old unit for the remainder of my enlistment and came home. I had no idea what I was going to do because my life had been turned upside down,” she says.

A year later she enrolled at Holyoke Community College (HCC) in Holyoke, Massachusetts, assuming that she'd transfer to another public institution and get free tuition for her National Guard service. Then she met Irma Medina, the coordinator of HCC's Math Transitions Program, which helps nontraditional students transfer to liberal arts colleges. Santiago-Slater explains, “She's the person who put the idea of Mount Holyoke in my head--and connected me with the directors of the Frances Perkins Program. I felt privileged to be part of the first group that came here through Math Transitions.”

As for her own transition to Mount Holyoke, Santiago-Slater's arrival on campus coincided with getting married. “I had so much going on but I didn't find it difficult adjusting. After being in the military and a coed college, it was different to be with all women. But once classes started, it just felt natural,” she says.

Santiago-Slater acknowledges that as a commuter student who works weeknights, she hasn't been able to participate in many campus social events. But she remains close to the women she got to know during orientation: “We meet between classes to talk and vent and lean on each other. That support really makes a difference.”

Santiago knows that the life she led between 18 and 22 is vastly different from those led by the traditional-age students with whom she sits in the classroom. But she's grateful to have a different perspective to bring to her education. She also appreciates that the military taught her at a young age the valuable lesson that sometimes plans don't work out. “So you adjust,” she says. “That's just life. It's also why I'm at Mount Holyoke now.”

As for her graduation date, Santiago-Slater expects that it, too, will need adjusting—but this delay is a joyful one. In December, she and her husband welcomed their first child. “I know I'll continue to feel that I belong at Mount Holyoke. The reassurance I've gotten on that front has been very important. I've realized how much I have to contribute.”