(Editor's note: Being an Assistant Secretary at the Department of Veterans Affairs isn't Tammy Duckworth's only job: Like thousands of other Veterans, she's also going back to school on the Post-9/11 GI Bill.  As she goes through that process, she'll be reporting periodically, first-hand, on the challenges and rewards today's Veterans face when returning to school.)

As an Assistant Secretary at the Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington, D.C., part of my job is to encourage other Vets to access their benefits, including the most significant update since Vietnam -- the Post-9/11 GI Bill.  Helping to spread the word about this new program has motivated me to the point that I see this as good a time as any to go back and finish my own degree.  In fact, for the first time in a few years, I have a stabilized life, a desk job at my National Guard unit, and the supportive boss needed to make going back to school viable.   In fact, I've been so inspired by my work with Veterans that I've not only decided to re-enroll, but I'm also changing my degree from Political Science to Health and Human Services -- so I can work on issues of public health.

It's been a long journey getting me back to the classroom after nine years.  In 2001, like so many students who work and attend school full time, I found myself struggling to meet all my program requirements.  I was writing my Ph.D. dissertation and had just taken command of my National Guard Black Hawk assault helicopter company.  (Like all who have had the privilege of command, I will always think of this unit as 'mine' because of the indelible place that the unit and its Soldiers have in my heart.)  I simply couldn't maintain a full time job, my educational commitment, and also be the commander I needed to be.  Something had to give, and since I needed to work to get the money to pay my mortgage, I chose to drop out of school.  In the fall of 2002, I restarted the Ph.D. program, this time at an online university.  But again, my studies were interrupted when I was mobilized to serve in Iraq in December 2003.  With my injuries, I never did make it back to school.  It has always gnawed on me that I got so close to my Ph.D. and never finished.  Plus, "Dr. Duckworth" has a quirky ring to it that I like.

So here I am in 2010.  This morning I took the plunge and went online to apply for my Statement of Eligibility at the VA's website at http://www.gibill.va.gov.   Since I already knew about the benefit, I skipped right to Step Two, filling out the online form.  It took me 32 minutes to complete.  Well, actually, it took about three weeks and 32 minutes: In reality, I started to do this last month and realized only after I logged on that I would need information from my discharge paperwork (DD-214), which I keep in a safe in my home in Illinois.  No problems, I thought, I'll just log onto my Army Knowledge Online (AKO) account and go to my Official Personnel File from there.  Except there was a problem -- I was locked out of AKO because my password had expired and I didn't have a CAC reader to log in to change my password.  Then I had to travel, and next thing you know, it's three weeks later and classes start in just 28 days.  I better get a move on. 

So this morning I logged onto AKO with a newly installed card reader, got my DD-214, and went back to the VA page to complete my online GI Bill application.  The directions said to "Be Patient" and that it would take 30 minutes.  Like I said, it ended up taking 32 minutes, but I had the benefit of having a lot of my data already in the system from my disability pension paperwork.  It's nice that it transferred over electronically, but I would expect that a new applicant with no other VA files would take more than 30 minutes.  (Note to self -- need to ask to have the 30 minutes comment on the instructions changed to something more realistic like 45 minutes or an hour.)  One of the things that slowed me down was the fact that I didn't have some needed information like my checking account's routing and account number for direct deposit and the school's address.  These were all things that I looked up easily online under a separate tab on my web browser, but it sure would've been nice to know I'd need them in advance so I could have had them ready.  I also could not get the VA site to accept attachments of my scanned DD-214s.  It kept giving me an error message that the files were an unauthorized format because they are ".tifs."  What other format would a scanned document be in other than a picture file?  Gonna have to talk to someone about that.  I also swagged on a few things like the exact month and day of my high school and college graduations.  I figure if I got the year right, that'd be close enough -- especially because I'm on such a time crunch.  (Second note to self -- add a list of documents and dates for Vets to prepare in advance of filling out GI Bill form to the VA's webpage.)

Okay, so in the end, it only took 32 minutes.  I'm cutting it close since VA is taking about 25 days to process Certificates of Eligibility and my online classes start on April 12.  But from this point, I plan on writing and tweeting about my experience.  As I found this morning, there are always things we can do better at VA to help our Veterans apply for their benefits -- like putting up a list of documents to prepare in advance.  I hope to get feedback from my peers out there.  I intend to relay the good, the bad, and the ugly to my colleagues here at VA so we can build on the good and fix the bad.  Now all I have to do is figure out how to carve out sometime everyday to do my homework!

(Follow Assistant Secretary Duckworth's progress on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/DuckworthVA.)