Teacher, Entrepreneur Chooses Marines
(June 18, 2010) |
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Marine Corps Pfc. Patrick Collman crawls out of a
tunnel at the 12 Stalls Crucible site at Camp Pendleton, Calif.,
June 3, 2010. The former teacher could have gone to Officer
Candidate School, but chose to be an enlisted Marine. |
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MARINE CORPS RECRUIT DEPOT SAN DIEGO, Calif., June 15, 2010
– Marine Corps Pfc. Patrick Collman, assigned to Platoon
2109, Company E here, could have gone to Officer Candidate
School, because he has a bachelor's degree.
But the entrepreneur and former teacher said he chose to
enlist instead, for the challenge.
Collman said he wanted to start from the bottom and work his
way up, as he has demonstrated in virtually every aspect of
his life leading to boot camp. “That way, if you do get into
a higher position, you know what the lower positions are
going through,” he explained.
Having grown up in the mountains of Colorado, Collman loved
the outdoors. He became a Boy Scout, attaining the rank of
Eagle Scout during his senior year of high school. But
before he could lead scouts, he had to start somewhere. Just
as Marines start as recruits, Boy Scouts must go through the
ranks and start as Cub Scouts.
“I was never satisfied with stopping halfway,” he said.
Earning Eagle Scout rank was just another challenge for him,
he added.
Just as in scouting, Collman was not satisfied with just
being a high school student in his teenage years. During
high school, he worked for three years designing databases
for a telecommunications firm. It made him realize that he
didn't like “suit-and-tie jobs,” he said, but it had its own
merits. |
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Collman also was active in search and rescue, and he became a certified
wilderness first responder. He participated in search and rescue operations, was
responsible for saving the lives of many people, performed CPR and organized
helicopter evacuations, he said.
After graduating from high school, Collman went to college at the University of
Colorado in Boulder. He operated his own contracting and construction company
and worked in the retail business during college to pay for tuition, books and
his cost of living. He started his business on a whim during his sophomore year
in college, he said, because job opportunities weren't abundant. He performed
tasks such as staining, painting and building decks.
“It was easy to do, and I like working with my hands,” Collman said. “There's a
craftsman's pride to that line of work. When you paint a house and walk by it a
year later and it's not peeling, you can think, ‘I did that.' It pays well, so I
raided [a home-improvement store] to get myself started.”
He took out ads and walked around neighborhoods putting out flyers, and said he
always had very competitive pricing. The business was mostly a “one-man band,”
he said.
He graduated from the college with a bachelor's degree in history and a
secondary social sciences teaching license. He got a job teaching high school
sophomore- and junior-level history and government classes in Erie, Colo., prior
to joining the Marine Corps.
Collman said he hadn't planned on becoming a teacher; he had started out
studying engineering.
“With teaching, the success is measurable,” he explained. “When students go from
C's to A's, you can see the change right in front of your eyes. A teacher
educates his students not only on the subject, but on life. They teach ethics,
morals and decision-making.”
Teachers can have a direct influence on their students' lives, he said. Teaching
history, he said, showed him he could turn something dreaded into something fun.
“I'd hear my fellow students saying, ‘History sucks,'” Collman said, looking
befuddled and disgusted at the notion. “I loved history. I was tired of people
bashing on history. It was like a little extra salt in my wound.”
Although he'd established himself as a teacher, Collman said, he had always
planned on enlisting in the Marine Corps. In high school, he said, he initially
looked into all the military branches because he wanted to serve his country.
“There's just something [Marines] have that the other branches don't,” he said.
“They are different from the other branches. Part of it is in the way they carry
themselves.”
The difference was obvious to him, he added, when he met his first Marine
recruiter.
“I walked in, and there he stood,” Collman said. “He said to me, ‘So you want to
join my Marine Corps?' The way he said it was like, ‘What the hell are you doing
here?'” Collman said he took it as a challenge.
Collman talked to his first recruiter when he was 16, and signed up when he was
22. He still remembers that first recruiter throwing that challenge at him.
That challenge was to become a Marine, and to defend his country, just as his
grandfathers did before him, he said.
“I've always been a die-hard patriot,” Collman said. He was a freshman in high
school during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, so that was even more
motivation for him to join, he added.
“There is a threat and someone has to stand against it,” he explained.
Though he has been trained to be a teacher, an Eagle Scout, a contractor and a
wilderness first responder, Collman said, he is a Marine first, and now that he
has completed boot camp, he plans to continue to challenge himself. | |
By
USMC Pfc. Katalynn Thomas
Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego
American Forces Press Service
Copyright 2010
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