“My mother and father were both in the military. My dad is a firefighter now, but my mom was in the military for 20 years, right out of high school. When I was little, maybe in kindergarten, she got deployed to Afghanistan for a year, and I stayed with my father in Grenada. It was really hard. She would send me mail, but my grandma couldn’t even finish reading it to me because I would be crying. I love my mom, and it was hard being away from her. I was so young that you would think it wouldn’t have affected me so much, but I was heartbroken. I just wanted to be with my mom.

When she came back, I cried a lot, but they were happy tears. We made big signs for her. We wrote on her car and gave her flowers. It was just very emotional because it had been so long, especially for a parent. I know she was going through it. So this was a happy moment with a lot of tears.”

– Iyanna, freshman business administration major from Tampa, Fla.