In an interview, Mitcham told PIN about her own rocky trip through college.

You had a very brief transition period, right?

I came home from Iraq in July of 2006, and I was boots-on-ground on campus [at Penn State] in August, which gave me very little time to shift from a combat deployment into my civilian mission, so to speak.

How did you spend that brief transition period?

I had to go through the Transition Assistance Program that the Army offers — a lot of PowerPoint presentations on VA benefits; having to go turn in all of your gear to make sure that you didn’t lose anything that the Army issued to you; going through your medical out-processing and your dental out-processing. At the same time, [I was] going through all of my post-deployment out-processing — where the Army made sure that I didn’t have any mental health concerns related to my deployment and that I came back with all my fingers and toes. All of that happened in about a matter of two weeks.

I found an apartment (in State College, Penn.), filed my Montgomery GI bill benefits, found a job, went back home — my parents lived in the Chicago area — bought some furniture to fill the apartment I had just found, then turned around and drove right back down to campus. I think three days later, after my parents helped me move in, was the first day of class.

That’s crazy.

Yes.

You didn’t want a little down time?

I have a lot of friends who chose to go that route — who wanted to take a break and needed to take a break. Every veteran is different and different veterans are going to transition in different ways. My transition was so quick because one of the things that I did was waive my right to stay [on active duty] for an additional six months for transition. I made the choice to get out quickly.

So, first day of school …

Day one on campus was interesting. First of all, I had to pick out what to wear — that was a change of pace [from military life].

Campus life is much less structured than military life. I had already gone and walked around campus to find where all of my classes were. I made myself a little map so that I knew how to get from class to class and how much time I had to get there.

I remember calling my mother in between my second and third class of the day. I said, “So what do I do now? I have an hour and a half. What do I do?” My mom sort of laughed and said, “Well, most students go and sit on the quad or they go get lunch or they, you know, meet with friends. What are you going to do?”

I remember saying to my mom, “Iraq was easier than this. I was trained for that, and I knew what to do. It was instinct — I reacted.” Mom sort of laughed and said, “Meg, you survived Iraq. You survived bombs and bullets. You saved lives. You can do this. And by the way, you’re not coming home.” And she hung up the phone on me.

I started getting more and more involved on campus. I worked at Penn State’s Veterans Outreach office, which was incredibly beneficial because it instantly gave me a peer group of veterans who could support me and who I could support. And it put a little bit of money in my pocket for pizza.

I also got involved in some student organizations that were not veteran related. I got involved in a leadership group and a service learning group. That really helped me maintain my sense of leadership and my sense of community service that I valued so much in my military training. It also helped me interact with non-veterans, a vital piece of my transition.

And really, no matter what campus we’re talking about, it’s mostly non-veterans — and very young non-veterans at that. Many of the student veterans we’ve spoken with remember lacking patience with those students during the first days and weeks in the classroom.

[Laughs] Sure. I was nicknamed “Staff Sergeant Meg.” The first week of class I was sitting in this huge lecture hall full of freshman — full of 18-year-old freshman. Keep in mind I was 23 or 24 at the time. Many of them showed up in their pajamas, which blew my mind. I will never understand that. And there was a group of students that was sitting behind me in the middle of this professor’s lecture who could not for the life of them put down their phones and stop talking to each other.

In the middle of class I stood up, turned around and looked at them and said, “Look, if you don’t want to hear what he has to say, get out, because the rest of us do.”

I turned around and I sat back down and the professor almost beamed with this sense of “Finally, someone respects me.” Of course all of the students gave me this look, “Who the heck do you think you are, lady?” But a student from across the lecture hall walked up to me afterwords and said, “So what branch of service?” He was a Navy veteran. So there you go.

That class was really hard for me for another of reason though. It was a lecture hall where you enter from the back of the classroom and walk down a series of steps, which meant that there was no way for me to be sure that I had an eye on both my lecture and every entrance to the room. That was really distracting for me at the time. I was still in a mentality of high-tempo operations and paying attention to every little thing that went on. I found myself shifting attention between class and what was coming through the door — especially when students were late, which is another thing that I never understood. On time is late in the military. If you’re not there early, you’re not there at all, so it’s those kinds of things you have to adjust to.

I never understood wearing pajamas to class and being late. 

Well, right. They did have their makeup done, I noticed. Which, again, what?

What about faculty? Were they supportive?

To be honest, I had a dream experience. I could not have asked for more supportive faculty. Every time the semester started, I had to walk up to each of my faculty members and say I still serve [as a reservist] and there may be some Fridays where I have to drill, that I will have to miss class or I will be late. All of my faculty bent over backwards to work with me to make sure if there was a test on one of those Fridays that I could take it early or to make sure that if I was missing class, it wasn’t an issue and that I was able to complete my work.

I actually had one professor who was a former Marine Corps public affairs officer. That was a sweet deal, because he completely understood everything. I had a number of faculty members who invited me to guest lecture. It was really, really exciting that my faculty were not only willing to work with me when I had concerns, but also willing to include me in the discussion and make my voice a voice on campus.

At some point you weren’t having only scheduling problems, though.

So, yes, you almost have to fast-forward to the end of my collegiate career to get to that point in my story. The military does a very good job of explaining to you the signs and symptoms of traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress and other invisible injuries you may face due to your combat experiences.

I was acutely aware of signs and symptoms; I knew what I needed to look for. I felt like I was talking about my experiences with friends and family — I’m a very very open person — and I thought: “If I just keep talking about it, I’m gonna be fine. I’m not noticing any signs and symptoms in myself, and if I do, I’ll deal with it.”

So fast-forward to the end of my academic career and that last semester. I had just come back from an internship in Washington, D.C., and I had four courses to pass to graduate, and it was time to find a job.

But it was 2008 and the economy had tanked. The pressures of another transition and trying to figure out where I was going to be started to really impact my mental health. I started to exhibit some significant signs and symptoms. I was the last person to notice any of it, but a lot of my friends and my family started pointing things out.

I was still in the reserves and one of my soldiers sat me down and said, “I think it would be to the benefit of this unit and to yourself for you to go get checked out.” I sort of just kept pushing things off — “I drink this much because I’m in COLLEGE, this is what college kids DO. And I’m having problems sleeping, well it’s because I’m up studying and I’m thinking about my classes. Then I’m sleeping in and MISSING classes — it sort of spiraled downward and I couldn’t get myself out of it.

Eventually I ended up at the VA hospital late one evening. One of the first things I said to the doctor was, “You can’t admit me, I have class tomorrow. I have to go back to school. I need to graduate.”

And the doctor said, “You’re not going to graduate on THIS path, so why don’t we work with your school, and see if we can work with your instructors, so that you can focus on your mental health, and you can graduate.”

I agreed with the doctor that I needed to get some help. So I stayed in the hospital and I made a call to my academic guidance counselor the next day when I was sort of out of my fog. It was Jamie Perry, one of the academic advisers in Penn State’s College of Communications. He probably saved my life. He had been my academic adviser my entire career. I only know that Jamie sent out emails to all of my professors. And I know that all of my professors then responded to me with “Whatever you need; we will get this done.”

I think I was still taking my final tests the day I walked across the stage; I know I was turning in final papers the night before. But everybody truly bent over backwards to ensure that I could focus on my mental health and graduate on time.

How long were you in the hospital?

About three days in the hospital, and then I took another week off to go home and spend some time with my family.

You were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Then what?

I needed to sit down and start thinking about what was really affecting me and how to address that. Then I could turn around and focus on school. There are so many people out there — not just at your institution of higher education, but in the community and in the employment world who are willing to help you. If you just focus on yourself and get the help, you can do this.

I’ve heard from veterans who say, “Why only focus on the veterans who struggle?” And I suppose this is one of those stories. But you came out of it, and it’s true than many student veterans don’t struggle at all — quite the opposite. 

It’s important to understand that the veteran population is as diverse as the American population. We all come from different backgrounds. We serve in different branches of service. We have different occupations for those branches of service. We get stationed at different units across the country and the globe. We get sent on different deployments. We have different experiences on those deployments. We have different reactions to those experiences. We come home to different support services. We make different choices on how we’re going to transition. Which means that we’re all very, very different.

I let my school know that I had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress and that I was going to need some assistance, and not once did one of them say, “Oh, gosh, is she gonna go running across campus with a weapon?” Not once.

Of course, yes, you hear the sensationalized horror stories. I think it’s also important to recognize that post-traumatic stress is not a veteran-specific illness. There are so many reasons that someone might end up diagnosed with post-traumatic stress. So, this isn’t necessarily a new thing that America is facing.

Here’s more from Meg Mitcham, who told her story in a 2012 Department of Veterans Affairs video:

The American Council on Education, where Mitcham is Director of Veterans Programs, has several resources for schools on student veteran needs and services, including their toolkit for veteran friendly institutions.

>> We’re doing our veterans coverage the Public Insight Network way, which means if you are a veteran we’d love to hear from you on this and other veterans issues: Veterans: Help improve our reporting on veterans

>> Read more about the student veteran experience, and see a map of schools with dedicated student veteran centers.

A self-portrait of the Mars rover Curiosity combines dozens of exposures taken by the rover’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) during the 177th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity’s work — Feb. 3, 2013 — on Mars. Curiosity landed on the planet on Aug. 6, 2012. (Photo by NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS via Getty Images)

Space geeks: Unite!

John Grotzinger, the head of NASA’s Mars Curiosity mission, is here at PIN headquarters in St. Paul, Minn., to share with us the latest research and a behind-the-scenes look at the red planet’s robot rover for Science Night Minnesota.

Minnesota Public Radio host Tom Weber will chat with Grotzinger on the stage of the Fitzgerald Theater about new discoveries, the potential for the building blocks of life on Mars and how it felt when Curiosity touched down after the so-called seven minutes of terror. They’ll be joined by Boing Boing science editor Maggie Koerth-Baker, who’ll help explore the world of space and scientific discovery.

You might not be able to make it to Mars — or even to Minnesota, for that matter — but you can get an evening’s worth of Mars and the science of space right here: We’ll be pulling in photos from the event, tweets from the audience (#sciencenight), updates from stage and more.

The event begins at 7 p.m. Central time tonight (Tuesday, May 21, 2013). Join us!

>> In the meantime, follow all of our Mars coverage — stories, art, updates and more — at ScienceNightMN.tumblr.com. 

The Hackathon will focus on real-world use cases for the new PIN APIs set to be officially released May 28. The new PIN APIs allow for searching and visualizing the wealth of contributions from the Network. For more details contact Peter Karman.

Bring your laptop and your programming chops and build something.

This post, which covers New Orleans public radio station WTUL’s “Deep Dialogue” series, comes from Ada McMahon, a media fellow at Bridge The Gulf, a community journalism project for Gulf Coast communities focused on justice and sustainability. A version of this post was first published on Bridge the Gulf’s website.

Featured speakers Ben Mintz, Derwin Wilright, Jr. and Shana griffin participate in WTUL’s “Where are you from, originally?” series on April 23, 2013. (Photo by Ada McMahon | Bridge the Gulf Project)

Where are you from, originally?

This simple question was the topic of a discussion at Community Book Center in New Orleans in April, and prompted a sweeping conversation about race, class, displacement and what it means to be from a rapidly changing city with deep roots.

The event was the first in the “Deep Dialogue” series hosted by the city’s WTUL “News and Views” show and the Bridge The Gulf Project. These in-person community conversations, recorded to air on WTUL, focus on topics that matter to New Orleanians and are made possible by funding from the Public Insight Network.

Here are just two excerpts from the conversation that I’ve been thinking and talking about since. They’ve been edited for length below, but you can listen to the full conversation here.

This first excerpt addresses some of the layered meanings behind the question: “Where are you from?” It features:

• Ben Mintz, who spoke about his discomfort about telling people he is from New Jersey, because he runs a news site about New Orleans
• Yasin Frank Southall, a community organizer who talked about people assuming he is from New Orleans because he is black, and the offensive things he hears when people realize he isn’t a local
• Shana griffin, an activist and researcher who grew up in public housing in New Orleans, spoke about feeling erased by post-Katrina policies
• Jennifer Turner (aka Mama Jennifer) of Community Book Center, who grew up in Central City and talked about the segregated New Orleans of her childhood
• Catherine Michna, a cultural historian at Tulane, who spoke about grappling with the “Where are you from?” question since high school, when she moved to New Orleans from Baton Rouge

The second excerpt touches on coastal land loss, climate change, and race. It features:

• Jonathan Henderson, who works for the Gulf Restoration Network
• Monique Verdin, who recently made a documentary film about how the Houma side of her family has been threatened by coastal land loss and Hurricane Katrina
• Amber, a young African American woman from New Orleans
• Shana griffin

The first of three events in WTUL’s “Deep Dialogue” series. The community discussion focused on race, place and what it means to be local. (Photo by Ada McMahon | Bridge the Gulf Project)

We’re inviting others to join the conversation by leaving a voice message at (504) 457-8439.

Some of those messages will be aired on WTUL.

Community members can also participate by suggesting a topic for the next “Deep Dialogue” event, which will be held on July 23.

Download the Guidebook app to access the mobile version of the PINCamp schedule.

With apologies to Groucho Marx, I do want to belong to a club that has these folks as members.

Do you know that nearly 40 people from 27 news organizations around the country have registered for PINCamp? Most of you are from public radio stations. But we also have journalists from the print, online and television world, as well as university instructors.

If the company you will keep doesn’t get you excited, maybe the discussions at PINCamp will. Below is a detailed guide to PINCamp 2013 in St. Paul. Alongside these sessions, there will be opportunities to meet with PIN staff one-on-one to talk through technical questions and get hands-on training with the PIN tools.

To access the schedule on your phone, download the Guidebook app. Then, go to “Download Guides” and search for PINCamp.

Thursday, June 6

Breakfast and an APM welcome
8:00-8:45

Real examples of engaging the community
9:00-10:15

Meet some PIN partners who have worked community involvement into their content. WITF’s (Central Pennsylvania) Transforming Health is a multimedia project about health care, its quality and its costs. Interactive producer Colette Cope will talk about how she used PIN to engage with people in the community and how that engagement guided reporting and led to stories on the air. Caitlin Shamberg of KCRW (Los Angeles) will talk about her station’s approach, through social media, to opening up dialogue about Los Angeles’ “Eastside” and “Westside” neighborhoods. And Stefania Ferro of WLRN/Miami Herald will share the steps she took to launch PIN-fueled coverage of Florida’s latest legislative session.

Presenters
Colette Cope – WITF
Caitlin Shamberg – KCRW
Stefania Ferro – WLRN and the Miami Herald
Daniel Rivero – WLRN social media editor

Moderator
Joellen Easton – APM

Go beyond your audience
10:30-11:45

Typical newsroom audiences tend to trend older, whiter and more affluent, yet we all want to access the insights of those who are younger, less affluent and/or part of immigrant or minority groups. How can we use PIN to reach hard-to-reach areas? We will convene a panel that has used PIN to connect with a diverse group. Amanda Peacher has used Oregon Public Broadcasting’s volunteer program to expand and diversify its PIN, bringing in new story ideas and amplifying the voices of under-represented community members. And Kat Chow of NPR will introduce you to an entire campaign designed for deep engagement with sources around issues of race.

Presenters
Amanda Peacher – OPB
Kat Chow – NPR’s Code Switch

Moderator
Annie Anderson – APM

Lunching and networking
12:00-12:45

Participants from PINCamp 2012 gather after a day of workshops in St. Paul, Minn. (Public Insight Network photo)

Making online reporting work for community building
1:00-1:45

Many reporters for legacy print or broadcast organizations see online as secondary to their main job. But what if a reporter’s online work could be woven into their day-to-day work? What if the online expression was a window into the journalist’s reporting process — a living document that provides fuller context by connecting the stories a journalist reports? Wouldn’t that create new content and also complement the reported story?

Dr. L.J. Thornton leads us in a discussion of how online content can add to a reporting stream without being a heavy lift and how that work can help community building, an important part of the PIN process.

Presenter
Leslie Jean Thornton – Cronkite School, Arizona State University

Moderator
Michael Caputo – APM

Solving community problems with PIN
2:00-3:15

It makes sense for newsrooms to organize reporting around “problems” rather than “topics.” This framework creates meaningful content that plays a real role in improving lives and becomes an indispensable service. Cole Goins of the Center for Investigative Reporting will lay out guidelines for a “problem-solving” approach to journalism, and will talk about how PIN partners can work with sources, community members and each other to highlight potential solutions to a particular issue. Dave Peters of MPR will discuss his solutions-based reporting effort, Ground Level, a multimedia project that focuses on issues – and the people trying to overcome them – in Minnesota communities beyond the Twin Cities.

Presenters
Cole Goins – CIR
Dave Peters – MPR News

Moderator
Joellen Easton – APM

Taking advantage of PIN’s big data
3:30-4:45

As journalists, we often see PIN as a wealth of stories. But, seen differently, it’s also a wealth of data. What does PIN’s big data look like? And how can we use it, combined with other data, to engage audiences deeply while maintaining their trust? With the upcoming launch of the PIN publishing tools, the possibilities will be endless. This session will touch on what’s possible without getting too technical, and will be an opportunity to work toward defining the boundaries of big data use and ethics.

Presenters
Ryan Kellett – Washington Post
Peter Karmen – APM

Moderator
Alison Brody – APM

Friday, June 7

Breakfast and gathering
7:30-8:15

Turning sources into storytellers
8:30-9:45

How can a station help PIN sources become reliable storytellers? Turning sources into storytellers allows PIN journalists to learn more about their source community and can be an empowering experience for people who participate. But creating storytellers takes work. PIN analyst Stefania Ferro will share how Miami’s WLRN turns sources into community commentators, telling their story in their own words. We will give tips on how to make the turn from response to commentary. And we’ll also share tips on taking audio from sources and producing it so that they are telling the story in their own voice.

Presenters
Stefania Ferro – WLRN and the Miami Herald
Daniel Rivero – WLRN social media editor
TBD

Moderator
Meg Cramer – APM

What do you know about PIN success?
10:00-10:45

PINCamp workshops will include discussions on how to use the PIN effectively, collaborating between newsrooms and strategies for effectively engaging communities. (Public Insight Network photo)

Kate Fink has been studying PIN as part of her dissertation research at Columbia University. She’s visited PIN newsrooms, surveying and interviewing people who use PIN, and analyzed the content of PIN queries and responses. She’ll be sharing the results of her research and talking about how newsrooms can encourage sources to tell stories and share experiences. She’ll also discuss ways to define PIN success in terms of audience, impact and content.

Presenter
Kate Fink – Columbia University

Moderator
Meg Cramer – APM

Why you have to invite feedback and, yes, criticism
11:00-11:45

Newsrooms must create journalism that invites engagement and collaboration with their audience. But what does it take to have an engaged newsroom? To invite collaboration internally and externally, you have to be open to feedback, even criticism. Are you willing to hear it and adapt? University of Missouri’s Joy Mayer, who specializes in community engagement and journalism, will talk about welcoming feedback in the newsroom and how it fits in with PIN-style journalism.

Presenter
Joy Mayer – University of Missouri

Moderator
Michael Caputo – APM

Lunching and networking
12:00-12:45

The source relationship: When the boundaries are challenged
1:00-2:00

The Public Insight Network hopes to create a relationship with sources, to email them on topics and sometimes to lean on them as the newsroom decides which direction to take the story. So what happens when a source relationship through PIN goes beyond sharing information, when that relationship becomes more personal or ambiguous? KPCC’s Ashley Alvarado and KUOW’s Carolyn Adolph will help start a discussion by sharing stories about a source relationship taking an unexpected turn.

Presenters
Ashley Alvarado – KPCC
Carolyn Adolph – KUOW

Moderator
Alison Brody – APM

The partner collaboration realized
2:15-3:30

With nearly 80 newsrooms using PIN, just how far can our organizations go when it comes to sharing responses, PIN data, queries and reporting? The answer is that we’ve barely scratched the surface. We will hear from PIN journalists who work with a committed media partner and who have teamed up with other PIN partners. It’s all about creating a collaborative spirit to serve audiences.

Presenters
Linda Lockhart – St. Louis Beacon
Ashley Alvarado – KPCC
Jeff Jones – APM

Moderator
Annie Anderson – APM

Be a Budget Hero »

If you ever wanted to control where your tax dollars go, here’s your chance to decide »

Firearm and immigration issues have dominated the news out of Washington lately, but many Americans say they are most concerned about economic topics, including the state of the federal debt, the size of the national deficit and shoring up Social Security and Medicare.

Those issues of budget and finance will take center stage in the coming months as the White House seeks a “grand bargain” with congressional Republicans over taxes, spending and entitlements.

Today, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office published its new 10-year estimates of federal spending, tax revenues and deficits. Its analysis of President Obama’s budget plan will be released Friday.

Since his second inauguration, Obama has pitched changes to Social Security and Medicare as part of a budget plan that the White House says would point the nation on a path toward reducing the national deficit. While he says his proposals were designed to meet congressional Republicans halfway, they make some of the president’s Democratic colleagues nervous as they look ahead to midterm elections.

With entitlements set to take center stage in Washington’s latest round of budget battles, we took the opportunity to find out how players of Budget Hero approached such hot-button federal issues.

Let’s start with Budget Heroes en masse. (Later this week, we’ll hear some individual players’ views on federal spending.) Since 2008, the game has been played more than 1.6 million times. While most players choose to remain anonymous, nearly 50,000 players shared their demographic information through the Public Insight Network.

Working with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Jefferson Institute (with funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation), we’ve created a data visualization that lets you explore the policy options Budget Heroes preferred as they played the game between May 2008 and December 2012, broken down by players’ demographics.

Take a look.

PLAY WITH THE DATA: The Wilson Center analyzed demographic and interaction data on nearly 50,000 plays of the Budget Hero game that occurred between May 2008 and December 2012 to get a better idea of Americans’ spending priorities.

A majority of players who identified themselves across political parties tended to both raise the Social Security age and to slowly increase Social Security benefits.

That data contradicts a Pew Research Center survey from late 2012 in which 56 percent of Americans polled said they opposed gradually raising the age at which people can begin receiving Social Security benefits. Thirty-eight percent of those polled matched the Budget Hero players, and were in favor of raising the minimum age.

To be clear: Budget Hero isn’t a scientific poll. Each version of the game has included dozens of different tax and policy options for players to pick. Since its launch, Budget Hero has undergone three major revisions to allow players to choose from among the latest economic projections and policy options being seriously considered by lawmakers. And because it’s a game, players’ choices do not necessarily reflect their political beliefs directly.

While the most recent Budget Heroes of all political stripes have largely been willing to calculate Social Security increases using the chained Consumer Price Index, an AARP survey released in April found “broad bipartisan opposition to chained CPI among voters over 50, with 69 percent of Democrats, 60 percent of Republicans and 67 percent of unaffiliated voters in agreement that Congress should not support the policy.”

Despite Budget Heroes’ widespread willingness to make changes to Social Security, players were far less receptive to the idea of gradually raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67.

That option was most popular among self-identified Republicans and Libertarians from May 2008 through July 2011, but it saw huge drops in popularity across the board from July 2011 through December 2012, especially among Republicans and Libertarians. It’s been more popular among players who identify as Democrats and independents in that same time frame.

Of course, the game launched in 2008, as the United States was beginning to feel some of the toughest effects of the economic collapse.

What did you find interesting in the Budget Hero data visualization? Share your insights through the Public Insight Network.

We’re planning to launch another major Budget Hero iteration this summer, based on the latest CBO projections of federal spending, revenue and the president’s budget proposals. Follow @BudgetHero to find out when the new version is released. If you haven’t played the game before — or if it’s been a while, – give Budget Hero a shot.