By Menachem Wecker
Graduate student Charlotte Brock grew up speaking French and English at home and quickly learned Portuguese and Spanish. Living in Jamaica, South Korea, the Cape Verde Islands, Algeria, France, Mexico and Benin as part of a Foreign Service family was “exciting, difficult, enriching and disorienting,” but she is grateful for the exposure to so many different cultures.
“Being the new kid every couple of years was hard, but it also taught me to get along with different kinds of people and to fit in in many different settings,” she says. “I feel very privileged to have had so many experiences and opportunities, and I intend to put them to good use.”
Ms. Brock, who is earning a master’s degree in security policy studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs, has certainly put her experiences to good use so far. Having wanted to be a Marine since she was a child – her family has a generations-old Marines tradition – Ms. Brock was commissioned in 2002 and deployed to Iraq in February 2004, and then again in July 2005, for six months each time.
“I knew it would be challenging, that I’d need to be physically fit, that it would be an adventure and that I’d be part of a team, and all that appealed to me,” she says of her decision to join the Marine Corps, which she served in for six years. She is currently in the reserves.
Marine officers had also always struck Ms. Brock as people who had the situation – whatever situation – under control. “I wanted to be that person who, in a crisis, would be calm and collected and figure out a solution to the problem,” she says.
During her first deployment, Ms. Brock was frustrated by her inability to leave the U.S. camp to go on convoys and to interact with Iraqis. “I was very disappointed when I realized that I was not going to be allowed to leave the wire for the duration of the deployment,” she says.
In addition to her job as a communications officer, Ms. Brock volunteered in a mortuary. “I took it as an opportunity to do something useful and meaningful,” she says. “What that experience was like is difficult to convey. Words that come to mind include sad, holy, gruesome, beautiful and life-changing.”
Working, going to classes and attending to all of her other responsibilities today is a lot to handle, but Brock is no pushover. In the Marine Corps, she encountered some who disagreed with women’s presence in the military and were “openly hostile” about her being a Marine officer, she says. Others were supportive, but most fell somewhere in between and accepted her when they saw that she was “good to go.” Even then, there was a lot of pressure, because at times Brock felt like she was being judged as a woman rather than as an individual.
“If you mess up, your mistakes can be seen as a weakness of your gender, and you feel like you’re letting down all women Marines,” she says. “It can be really tough. But hey, they don’t promise you a rose garden.”
Ms. Brock currently works as an editor and analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, where she is involved in a wide range of projects from war games to budget reports. She has worked on papers about laser technology, alliances and the F-22 Raptor. She does all this while juggling drilling with her Reserve unit and studying for her master’s degree.
“There are definitely sacrifices,” she says. “I would love to be more involved in the GW Student Vets group, in the Conflict Resolution Forum, in volunteering and in lots of other activities, but I have to be realistic about how much I can take on and how many hours there are in a day.” She adds that the Elliott School is the only school in the District with an international affairs program that “caters to working professionals.”
This semester, Ms. Brock has been conducting research on women and security for a course in conflict prevention. She is applying for a Boren Fellowship, which she hopes will help fund her studies in India, where she would like to conduct research on the all-female Indian United Nations peacekeeping unit that deployed to Liberia in 2007.
“Next semester I will attend a Marine Corps civil affairs course and then spend two months in New Delhi volunteering in a women’s empowerment NGO,” she says. “One thing I’ve never been much good at is staying in one place!”
Comments? Criticism? The conversation continues. We welcome reactions, commentary and story recommendations on our Facebook page.