Transformations: Working with Veterans in the Composition Classroom 339 > Galen Leonhardy Working with and learning from veterans reveals a wide range of inclusive opportunities that composition instructors might use to facilitate transformations of service-related experiences into effective compositions. Transformations: Working with Veterans in the Composition Classroom I n working with the veterans at Black Hawk College and other two-year and four-year institutions, I have learned that, when a vet is ready to write about a military experience, there is generally a sense of commitment to the process and the product. My comments as vets progress through their writing processes tend not to be harshly presented, even though most vets with whom I have worked resent shallow readings of their work and are not afraid of having their essays dug into. After all, boot camp helped most of us get past feelings of hypersensitivity. That is not the same in terms of ideological critique, however, which necessitates a more gradual approach. In short, the development of critical political sensitivities seems best suited to private journal writing, brief bantering, and research-based activi- ties—research that allows entry-level vets to transform awareness by constructing contextualizing histories and then, in more advanced works, to begin seeing the global or interrelated nature of the political and historical webs of interaction that so affected their lives. 1 That is a process that could take twenty years or so, but it is one that we can start in the composition classroom. Certainly, veterans, combatant or noncomba- tant, should not be dissuaded from experiencing writing as a process of reshaping service-related experiences into malleable compositions. That is not as easy as it New Voice So, in community college no one would even know I was a vet. I had long hair and a long beard. At first, I was even accused of plagiarism because my writing skills were better than what was expected. I don’t remember being allowed to write narrative, but I also don’t remember being told not to. The first quarter was straight comp, doing the five-paragraph theme. The second quarter was writing about literature. I didn’t learn about sentence combin- ing and stuff until I was in grad school. I got my PhD when you started—mid-80s. I was in the community college in 1976 and at the university in 1977, graduating with the BA in 1979. I just wasn’t seen as the vet, except in the VA office, I think. —Victor Villanueva, July 4, 2008