From Boot Camp to Business School

With a high school diploma in hand and a tassel turned, Keanu Spindola had a difficult decision to make for his next steps: join the military or go to college.

Eventually, he did both: the 26-year-old is now a business management major and the president of Santa Clara’s Student Veteran Organization. But as a first-generation Mexican-American student, Spindola had believed that he didn’t see anyone who looked like him in higher education. So instead of attending college, he originally decided to join the United States Marine Corps.

“I wanted to take advantage of the GI Bill and the military’s college resources, but even more, I wanted to do something greater than myself,” Spindola said.

After enlisting, Spindola was shipped off to North Carolina for his military training. With prior experience as a mechanic, he was assigned to work as a military technician to help build and repair military trucks.

But something felt lacking to him. When Spindola thought of his decision to join the military, a key consideration for him was the opportunity to see the world. In reality, he was sent to Camp Pendleton in San Diego as part of a non-deployable unit.

Very quickly, Spindola realized that this experience in the military wasn’t quite for him.

“During my second year, I was promoted to the office to do paperwork,” Spindola said. “I was able to get my military work done during the day and could take classes at night.”

Finally, he made another difficult decision. In 2019, after a little over a year, he decided to leave the military and move back to San Jose.

“I had originally planned to stay in the military for 20 years,” Spindola said. “Now, I felt like I had lost my sense of purpose, lost my community and lost my friends. I had to learn how to be a civilian again.”

After a tumultuous bout of identity crisis, Spindola decided to enroll in DeAnza Community College. For months, Spindola felt like no one could understand what he, a veteran, was going through. Then, he found a student veteran community on his campus.

“Slowly, I started to regain my confidence and be more authentic,” Spindola said.

Even so, this transition back to civilian life was not easy.

“The military does a really good job of teaching you to always put the mission above yourself, but this is not the same mindset in the civilian world,” Spindola said. “I was out of the military, but I was still putting the mission, my job and school before myself. I was getting burnt out.”

With the help of therapy, family support and a strengthened college community, Spindola began to learn about the value of his own journey. He began to prioritize himself and lived by the mantra, “No one is going to care for me as much as I care about myself.”

Spindola decided to commit to a four-year college and found himself on Santa Clara’s campus, but saw one thing lacking. Now, as president of the Student Veteran Organization, he hopes to build a Student Veteran Center on campus.

“There are only 38 student veterans in the whole university,” Spindola said. “I wanted more representation in our community. Being in the military made me the man that I am today.”

His goal is to create awareness about student veterans on campus and to advocate for a new center. Having served with such a diverse group of people, Spindola feels that every time he looks around campus, he sees the same groups of people that filled his ranks, from race to sex to background.

“We are stronger when we support and show up for each other,” Spindola emphasized. “Imagine how much we could learn from each other.”

On Nov. 10, Spindola, along with ASG Chairman of the Student Senate Evan Fine, will host Santa Clara’s Veterans Day event in front of Mission Santa Clara and Locatelli Center to honor current and past veterans.