First, I would like to thank all of the staff and board members of SOF for all of their hard work and their willingness to help all of the veterans. I know all of you probably wish there was more that you can do, but I just wanted to let you know that everything you have done to help me has been huge.
I think one of the things that helped me out the most was the ability to receive the housing allowance. As much as it sucks for me to say your money was helpful, it really was. It allowed me to focus less on trying to work overtime for a little extra money and I was able to focus more on my schoolwork. Maybe that isn’t the same for others, but my degree was in engineering technology. I had to take math classes and engineering classes online that I would have never dreamed of being able to do. With the extra time that was required to “teach me” through online learning the housing grant made it that much easier to focus on my schoolwork. There were some weeks where I was putting in 30 to 40 hours a week in homework on top of my normal job. Then on top of that, I was lucky enough to be provided a new laptop to assist with running some of the programs that I needed to run for my degree.
I also appreciated the reviews that we did. It may not have seemed like much, but it made me strive to keep going and do better each time I had a review. That allowed me to show all of you that supported me that your support was not going to waste. So again, thank you for your work to keep pushing me.
Because of the assistance of SOF, I was able to complete a degree in a field that required some serious work and effort on my part, and I was able to maintain some really good grades throughout the process. I graduated with cum laude honors!
Now that I have my degree, I plan on looking for a job that will fit in with the degree that I have. I would love to get into some sort of aeronautical engineering position. The hunt is on!
With sincere thanks,
Andrew Mack