I said to my friend that it was not so much what happened on 9/11. What concerned me more was the world we would wake up in on Sept 12, 2001. Certainly, our country and the world will never be the same. This gave a different focus to my military career in the hopes of making sure that a 9/11 event would never happen again. With modern war, the home front is as important as overseas. We must be vigilant and studies in such an area as homeland security studies are vital. While this may not be my entire focus, it occupies a healthy portion. In your fourth question, you ask what my experience is and/or aptitude for completing academic work at a distance. Frankly, I have many friends and family members that have received degrees online. Their main issue (especially with younger people) in dealing with the online academic environment has been discipline. The online environment because of its asynchronous nature demands organization and self-discipline. In my opinion, this will not be a problem in my case. A person simply can not function in the U.S. Navy (especially as an officer or NCO) without discipline. The institution exudes a culture of self and institutional discipline that is in a person's vocational "DNA" after their initial training. This only grows with time and once one reaches retirement in the military, they...

As an undergraduate student at Excelsior, I delivered a 3.75 grade point average. Certainly, the college can believe me when I state that I can definitively deliver similar results in the pursuit of a higher academic degree.
In your fifth question, you ask what special abilities, qualities, or life experiences I will bring to the program. Again, I will draw upon my Naval experience, as it guided my life from 1987 to 2011. First, although I am now what some may consider middle age, I am technologically savvy, a critical skill that is necessary in any online or hybrid learning environment. Managerial office positions require a high technical proficiency. Rest assured, I could not have functioned or succeeded without them. Secondly, the military only trusts classified information, especially at a Top Secret level, to individuals who have passed the strictest of background checks. A special background investigation goes back through 15 years of a person's life to judge their record and their character to make sure that they can be trusted with the nation's most precious secrets. The program can trust me when I say that they are making a superior choice when they approve me for a slot in the liberal arts graduate…