Kinno Dizon is currently a biology major at the University of Guam.  He is also a veteran of the war in Afghanistan.

Dizon was deployed to Afghanistan in 2013, serving as a surgical technologist for the U.S. Navy. He describes this deployment as the most memorable experience of his military service career.

While serving in Afghanistan, he had done things an average citizen would never experience. As part of his job, he had also seen a lot of trauma and handled situations normal hospitals do not.

“There [was] good and bad that came out of this experience,” Dizon said.

The bad things are PTSD and insomnia.

A good thing is the bond that he developed with fellow veterans of the war.

Dizon graduated from Simon Sanchez High School in 2009.

A year later, he joined the U.S. Navy to follow the footseps of an older brother who also enlisted.

Dizon left active military duty in 2014, but remained a navy reservist.

Dizon said it took him a while to adjust to civilian life and becoming a full-time college student.

He was apprehensive at first. For one, he was older than most of his classmates. He adapted quickly, however, and is now comfortable with being a student.

His advice to people going through a similar experience is to stick it through.

“There may be times when you miss the military, but it will pass. Focus and reward yourself,” he said.

Dizon plans to graduate in Fall 2017 and wants to pursue an advance degree in either the dental or the medical school at Ohio University.

“I’ve always wanted to do something in the medical field,” Dizon said.

But one of those things wasn’t to become a nurse, he said, so he decided not to pursue a nursing degree at UOG.

Before enrolling in UOG, and working full-time in the military, Dizon took online classes.

Now, as a civilian student at UOG, Dizon takes primarily offline classes.

The main difference between offline and online courses, he explained, is the pace.

Online classes were a faster pace and four weeks shorter.

The workload was also self-paced and assignments were typically due within a week.