Jim O’Rourke had a less-than-typical freshman year experience. At 24 years old, he transferred to UW-Madison out of the military, where he had been taking college courses in his free time. Unable to connect with his younger classmates, O’Rourke described that first semester as isolating.
“I didn’t have a lot of friends—a lot of the guys don’t have that typical experience where you move into the dorms and have more or less an assigned friend group,” O’Rourke said. “I imagine that’s how it kind of works. I have no idea.”
But weeks into that first semester, O’Rourke found a community in the Veterans, Educators and Traditional Students organization—a smaller group of people he said spoke his language and made him feel at home.