(Santa Ana, Calif.) Marine Veteran and Santa Ana College student Tyler Fuller came to California in 2021 with the Marines and ended up staying for the long-run after falling in love with California.
As he finishes his Associate Degree, Fuller strives to pursue a career in engineering and is involved with the Mathematic, Engineering, Science, Achievement program (MESA), the Veterans Resource Center (VRC), and the U2 Scholars program.
When did you come to California? What made you stay?
I moved to California at the very end of 2021, and I came out here with the Marines. I ended up staying out here just because I loved it.
Originally, I was from Kansas. So after high school, I attended community college there. I was working two jobs, trying to pay for it, because it’s not free there like it is here.
As far as the small city life in Kansas, I don’t mind working for the things that I want to achieve in life, but there’s just not a lot of opportunities there. It’s just unmatched when it comes to the potential you have in California. It was one of the people from the Veterans Resource Center here that actually genuinely helped me and sat me down and walked me through like the process because getting out, I didn’t really know how to use my GI Bill.
Coming here, they pretty much sit you down, walk you through every single step of the way. They were just by far the most helpful. Regardless if you go to school here or not, they help you with a lot of your benefits and any of your needs. A lot of them will help people that are older with their disability claims and things of that nature. And then even with housing and things like that, because there’s a lot of federal and state programs that can help us, and the school here just seems to know every single benefit for veterans and tries to help them.
What was your experience in the Marines?
When I was in the Marines, I got stationed in Japan for two years. That was super cool. The food was amazing. The beaches were awesome. The people were great. It was a cool experience, and then COVID happened. I also got to go to Thailand for maybe two or three months, which was, again, another great experience. I’ve been to Guam for about a month and a half. And even in
Guam, it was super cool because everybody was really happy to see us there. It was really like a shift. Like everyone was super excited to see Marines in Guam.
You do have some of the worst days in your life where you regret joining and then you have some of the best days where it’s like, “Oh, I’m gonna do this for the rest of my life.” A lot of those memories come from just the barracks, which is just like dorms in college where you live with your friends. But also, you live with your best friends every single day. So, all the worst days are with them and all the best days are with them. There’s so many good memories.
I got to see F-35s take off. I’ve got to see bombs dropped, like in the desert, not on anything. Just some of the stuff you get to do and some of the people you get to meet. I got to set up an antenna on a naval ship to do like a communication shot and it’s just neat things like that. You get experience in job fields that you never would be doing at 18, 19 years old.
What does your everyday life look like now at Santa Ana College?
Right now I’m majoring in civil engineering. It’s pretty much just making structures, but more on a city level such as stadiums, highways, water pathways, things like that. I’m also interested in electrical engineering because I know they deal with radio wave propagation and things like that and my job was being a radio operator in the Marines.
I actually went to another community college in the area before here and I felt nothing towards the campus. Like I didn’t really care about it. I just went to class and went home pretty much, even like the VRC events. It was okay, but it wasn’t really the same type of community I got here at SAC.
Once I came here and started going to the VRC, they introduced me to other programs like MESA and then U2 Scholars.
“It seems like a lot of the stuff on campus is pretty well intertwined into each other to get you truthfully involved on campus. I never thought I’d be the individual that was partaking in extra activities on campus, but at SAC it definitely feels like a good place to do it.”
What was the most difficult thing you faced and how did you overcome it?
One of the hardest things I had to overcome was when I was getting out, like I didn’t really have any help of any sort. So like everything in life, you learn as you go. But after small faults and then just figuring out how to live and figuring out how to rent and things like that, you get through it and it’s not something you’re really taught. You kind of have to get out there and know how to do it.
It was really hard getting out of the Marines at 22 years old and just kind of being tossed out into life to figure out what I’m doing the next day.
What is your next goal?
I’m hopefully trying to get into USC. I’m also applying to California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. I want to finish my bachelor’s in whatever engineering I truthfully decide upon, and then I’m trying to finish my federal retirement. So hopefully after that I can get a few internships while being at these schools and then get my federal job to finish out the next 16 years.
The federal retirement is 20 years of federal work, and then you can receive the full retirement. So, since I already did the four years in the Marines, I just have to work 16 years of another portion of a federal job to finish out my full retirement.
What would be your advice to other students?
My advice would be to get involved. I think that would be my advice to anyone, no matter what. If you’re going to school, I’d say just get involved. You meet a lot of people, you see a lot of new opportunities.
“Being from Kansas, I never actually pictured being able to apply to schools like USC or any of the UCs for that as a fact.”
I kind of thought that was fake, I guess, until I finally got put in this situation and met people that were in similar situations and did end up going to those schools.
