Shamira kept shifting her legs back and forth, not able to find a comfortable position as she waited for her flight to be called. Finally, a voice spoke up over the loudspeaker system, “All first class passengers, Global Service members, and military personnel may now board. Again, first class passengers, Global Service members and military personnel.”
Shamira shouldered her bag and gripped her ticket. She gave a nervous smile to the flight attendant who checked her ticket, almost missing the small beep as she was motioned forward. She shoved her bag under the seat in front of her after grabbing a couple of books, her favorite way to pass the time on airplanes, and her iPod. She plugged in her ear buds, but the music seemed to make her even more nervous. Her books didn’t help either, so she just stared out the window at the buildings as she had done so many times before. The familiar architecture of the Chicago O’Hare Airport, while sometimes an annoyance, seemed to be a comfort right then. She twirled her necklace anxiously, her fingers running over the six corners of the star around her neck. She closed her eyes as passengers noisily filed in behind her.

Her eyes fluttered nervously as she tried to clear mind, but even after years of certainty and four years of training, her doubts couldn’t seem to keep quiet.
Shamira had lived in the Chicago suburbs area for her entire life, including college. She loved living in the “windy city”. She knew that she was lucky to have grown up in a suburb like she did, with its proximity to Chicago while retaining the quiet and clean feel of a smaller town. Sometimes, though, she felt like she lived in an area where people wanted to everything to have a place to fit. Everyone seemed to follow one of a few paths, starting from childhood.

The one she was on started with preschool where she learned to read so she could be like her big sister. She and her mom even helped out in her older sister’s class before she went to elementary school herself. From there, she was accelerated to higher math classes and reading levels. Her parents didn’t push her to do it; she pushed herself. She applied to magnet programs and schools for the ‘gifted and talented’. She was accepted and went, working hard and focusing almost her entire life on school. She enjoyed learning, thriving in an environment with others who loved it, too.

Then came high school. It seemed as though it was a race to the top: who can take the hardest courses, get the best grades, and be in the most clubs. Shamira enjoyed it for the most part. The path kept going onto college. To her, it seemed like there was a certain mentality that she people in her area have. It’s not complicated, they think. Going to college is natural for Shamira and her friends; it seems as though everyone goes because it’s the next step in life. Most of them don’t have to worry much about money and if they do, they take out loans, knowing that they’ll be able to pay them back. To deviate is considered odd, it is questioned and scrutinized. Why would you throw all of this away? How can you take this education for granted? People wonder.

But for Shamira, education wasn’t all of it. Since she was in seventh or eighth grade, she’d wanted to do more. Not just continue schooling for year after year, but to do something meaningful for others with that knowledge.

So she did what she knew how to do; she researched. And then she thought, writing out pro and con charts to weigh the options. Then she thought some more. And then she opened her mouth to tell her parents, but every time she would shrink back and think to herself, “I’ll tell them tomorrow”.

And tomorrow came and went many times. She tried to rationalize, asking herself why she would be nervous. Every reason she came up with boiled down to one main point: she was deviating from a set path and she was going to take a new route. Change is frightening.

But it wasn’t even the change itself that scared her the most. It was the reaction to it. Shamira’s parents had never been helicopter parents because she and her sister pushed themselves throughout school and expected nothing but the best from themselves. It seemed to be a family trait, that almost irrational fear of letting people down over anything. Shamira was afraid that with this decision, she was letting her parents down.

She didn’t want her mom and dad to think that she condoned violence or that she wanted to harm innocents. She didn’t want them to think that she’s not grateful for the opportunities they had given her. She didn’t want them to think that she was just trying to get away.
It took over two years before Shamira told her parents her decision. And all through those two years, she planned what she wanted to say word for word. But when it came down to it, nothing came out. Shamira opened and closed her mouth, looking like some sort of nutcracker, not moving by her own free will. Her voice caught in her throat and she tried to push through it, but all that came out were croaks.

Finally, she cleared her throat enough to talk, but she couldn’t remember anything she’d wanted to say. So she stayed nice and simple, “Mom, Dad, I want to go to college as a part of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. My goal is to graduate a second lieutenant in the army.”
“You what?” Was the only response she got.

Shamira repeated what she’d said, and then barreled on, “I’ve wanted to do this for a while. I want to be able to say that I kept my country safe, that I served my country with pride. I want to use what I know and what I’ll learn to keep people safe.”

The military wasn’t a common path in Shamira’s family. She didn’t think that the thought ever crossed either of her parents’ minds that this was a possibility.

To Shamira, though, it was. This was a way to get an education while gaining leadership and military skills, a way to enhance her life by helping others and keeping her nation safe.
Slowly, her dad began to nod, “We should talk about this.”

And so they did. For weeks, they talked about why she wanted to join and what it meant for them. After about a month, her parents finally accepted that this was what she wanted to do.
The next person Shamira told was her great-uncle. Her great-uncle was nothing like the rest of her family; he was a Republican, a religious Catholic, and most importantly, a retired two-star general in the army. She told him when she and her parents sat down to brunch with him and her great-aunt.

He smiled proudly, but didn’t say anything at first. Then, he did something that surprised her: he tried to persuade her not to.

He told her why she shouldn’t do it and she responded, telling him why she should. At the end of that two-hour brunch, he winked, “Lieutenant Halevy has a nice ring to it. You’ll be an amazing officer. The army needs people like you.”

And Shamira was more certain than ever that this was what she wanted to do.

What her great-uncle did was more beneficial than any pamphlet or interview. He told her about real-life hardships in the military and what joining ROTC would actually mean, and that was what she needed. Not someone nodding, and agreeing, “If that’s what you want to do.” Not someone blindly denying it, “Why would you ever do that? It doesn’t make any sense.” But someone questioning, making sure that this was what she wanted to do.

Shamira was startled back to the present as the flight attendant came over the loudspeaker, “Ladies and gentlemen, prepare for takeoff.”

She smiled and stared out the window as the plane lifted off the ground. Taking a deep breath, Shamira felt her nerves calm down. There would always be doubts and moments of anxiety, but she could bushwhack and clear her own path. She’d gotten pretty good at it. Slowly, Chicago disappeared behind the clouds as Shamira’s eyes fluttered closed into a peaceful sleep.