I grew up in a system that worshipped order—rank, discipline, ceremony, codes. I knew what a uniform meant before I could tie my shoes. I knew how to say “yes, sir” even when I didn’t mean it. My parents served. The flag flew outside our house. And we moved. A lot.
And through all of it, school was the one place that was supposed to be the same—that’s what they told us.
“Math is math anywhere in the world,” they said.
“History doesn’t change,” they said.
“Education is the great equalizer,” they said.
But I knew early on that school didn’t fit me. Not really.
Not the way it was structured.
I didn’t care about algebra. I wasn’t inspired by war dates or state capitals. I had zero passion for multiple choice.
But I lit up for four things:
Art. Music. Biology. English.
Between Bases and Bell Schedules
We moved every few years, like clockwork. New countries. New schools. New rules. But what I discovered is that even in the most rigid education systems, some classrooms breathed differently.
Art class gave me permission to be curious instead of obedient.
Music taught me to listen—not just to notes, but to silences.
Biology pulled me out of my own head and into the wild world of organisms and systems.
And English—that was my escape hatch. The one subject that gave my thoughts a language, and my feelings a home.
In every school, whether it was in Belgium or North Carolina, those were the four places I could be myself.
Not a rank. Not a test score. Not “dependent of.”
Just me.
The Hidden Curriculum
When you’re a BRAT, you learn to adapt—fast. You learn to read people, pack light, hold your feelings tight, and answer questions like, “Where are you from?” with a shrug and a practiced smile.
And so much of school felt like another uniform: lessons in conformity, answers you could bubble in. But art and music and English and biology didn’t ask me to adapt. They asked me to look inward. To question. To observe. To care.
That mattered.
Because I didn’t know how to say it at the time, but I wasn’t just learning facts—I was learning how to feel human in a system built for silence and survival.
The Military Made Me Move, But These Subjects Helped Me Stay
They gave me consistency.
A cello sounds like home, whether it’s playing in Belgium or Kansas.
A good poem holds up on any continent.
The beauty of mitosis doesn’t change with zip codes.
And painting always brought me back to center—even if the walls around me changed every two years.
What I Know Now
I used to think I wasn’t good at school. But that wasn’t true.
I was good at learning—just not in ways that could be easily graded. I was wired to pay attention to beauty, pattern, connection, and voice.
And while the military trained me to adapt and endure, those four subjects taught me how to understand the world—and myself—in a deeper, more lasting way.
That wasn’t failure. That was freedom.
