It was about as picturesque a Mid-Atlantic spring morning as one could imagine. The sun hovered in the cloudless sky, soaking a Foggy Bottom neighborhood bustling with energy as the 2024-2025 academic year was winding down to its conclusion. Just after 9 a.m., a man on a bicycle emerged onto F Street.
On one of his last mornings as an undergraduate student at the George Washington University, where he has studied exercise science for the past two-and-a-half years, Reggie Jaramillo put on the brakes just outside the Military Community Center’s rowhouse, his on-campus home since his arrival in winter 2023. Sporting a black shirt, gray shorts and an orange helmet that reflected the sunlight of that morning, Jaramillo arrived early to prepare himself for the final lecture of his undergraduate career. He went inside to make a cup of coffee and prepare his notes for his 10:50 exercise science class.
At 10:30, he left through the rowhouse’s front door and walked the 13 minutes to class at the Milken Institute School of Public Health building. When he would walk the 13 minutes back from class, he would have no more lectures to attend as an undergraduate student, the last step to becoming his family’s first college graduate.
It’s especially fitting that this chapter of Jaramillo’s journey ended on such a day. Because when it began, the sky was not filled by the sun but with rockets flying overhead.
In 2020, on his third deployment as a medic in the U.S. Army, Jaramillo had decided he wanted to go to school and began taking online courses at a community college, with hopes and dreams of becoming a physician assistant ahead of him. But his present interrupted his future, where aerial attacks near his base in Iraq disrupted his internet connection and safety.
But that future finally arrived, and this chapter of his life is finally complete. As of May 18, Jaramillo is an alumnus of both the U.S. Army and GW.
“It feels surreal,” said Jaramillo, who held the rank of sergeant when he left the Army. “It’s been a crazy, beautiful journey.”
Paving his path
The journey began in New Braunfels, Texas, where Jaramillo, a first-generation Mexican American, grew up and navigated a life that included poverty, public housing and language barriers. He loved his hometown for the water, the soccer and the time he could spend outside.
What he did not love was high school, struggling to find a purpose through it.
But he was hardworking, caring and ambitious. He wanted to pursue something. Despite his feelings toward high school, Jaramillo wanted to go to college. But even his local community college seemed unaffordable, especially with his mother supporting his younger siblings at home. Taking on extra debt wasn’t something he felt his family needed.
Eventually, he’d meet an Army recruiter who talked to him about college tuition benefits for military-affiliated people. Jaramillo was sold, but there was a big hurdle. He would have to lose nearly 30 pounds to qualify. He did so, sparking what has now become a lifelong endeavor in fitness, exercise and health.
“That kicked off my discipline—I really worked hard to get there,” said Jaramillo, who in the last year and a half hasn’t once taken an elevator ride at GW and opted for the stairs. “Within three months, I lost the weight, swore in, and I was in.”
He commissioned in 2014 and would go to Fort Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina, for basic training and Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio for medic training before eventually going to Fort Benning in Georgia for airborne school. Then, in 2015 he was stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, a high deployment base. And in May 2016, at just 20 years old, Jaramillo went on his first overseas mission to Nigeria, a seven-month endeavor. There, he said, clean water was a bigger issue than warfare.
His second deployment beginning in August 2017 to Niger, though, was a turning point. In those seven months Jaramillo saw the reality of combating terrorism and how far-reaching it is. ISIS was growing, and he remembered seeing ISIS flags in some towns. And there, he experienced the loss of four members of his unit in an ambush attack. “Watching their bodies come off that helicopter was the worst thing ever,” Jaramillo said.
Starting in September 2018, he began at what would be his final duty station in the United States in Alaska. While on the Great Frontier, he got into CrossFit and began coaching it, even becoming a fitness mentor. He enjoyed helping people improve, especially remembering his own fitness journey, and it clicked that long-term healthcare was something he wanted to pursue.
His deployments also inspired him to begin charting a path down this professional route. In Niger, he had the opportunity to assist NGOs and the Red Cross, providing care for citizens displaced by conflict. And on his last deployment to Iraq, which began in August 2019, he had the chance to train Iraqi soldiers on basic hygiene and life-support skills.
“These experiences developed into something I became truly passionate about,” Jaramillo said.
While in Iraq, which turned from a seven-month commitment to 11 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Jaramillo set his return to education in motion, first through online coursework at a community college. He wouldn’t let anything deter his newfound purpose, even the rockets flying above that knocked out his Wi-Fi.
Finding empowerment
Even though Jaramillo knew higher education was his next chapter, it wasn’t easy to grip the pen that would write it. Transitioning out of the military was stressful. He began cold-calling different organizations, asking how they could help him.
He utilized tools such as the Transition Assistance Program and the Warrior-Scholar Project, which sent him to a STEM bootcamp at Yale. There, he met other veterans who were pursuing big goals in law, policy and medicine. That helped him realize he wasn’t alone, even when the transition seemed daunting.
“I’m 30 now, but for me, 28 was the wild age—getting out of the military, trying to go to school, work, do everything,” Jaramillo said. “And then you realize the world keeps going. Society doesn’t stop for you. That was the scariest part—failing. I didn’t want to fail, and I had to face that immediately. So, I just took any opportunity I could and ran with it.”
Jaramillo decided the D.C. region was the place to pursue those opportunities, given his positive experience when in 2016 he was temporarily stationed at Fort Belvoir in Fairfax County, Virginia. GW eventually won him over because it offered a specific exercise science major, not to mention his now-wife is an alumna. He enrolled in spring 2023 after having been a presidential scholar at Northern Virginia Community College.
It didn’t take him long to make an impact at GW.
Not only did he fully immerse himself in his academic program, but he became an advocate for GW’s veteran and military affiliated community by serving as the GW Student Veterans Association (SVA) president. That organization provides comprehensive academic, professional and social support to the 1,300-plus military-affiliated students enrolled at GW through engaging events and monthly art therapy sessions and social outings. Ultimately, the association strives to enhance the collegiate experience and foster a strong sense of belonging.
While recognizing all veterans and military-affiliated students have unique stories and experiences, Jaramillo has appreciated the community built among one another and feels fortunate that GW has supported their endeavors.
“When I got here, I met student veterans who were just like me—wanting to pursue something they were passionate about. It was empowering to see other veterans doing that,” Jaramillo said. “It was a community where I could express myself freely, ask for advice and find guidance from upper-class student veterans who were in the same position as me. It wasn’t just a group of veterans—it was a family, and I felt like I belonged.”
Jaramillo paid that forward when he served as GW’s SVA president. He leaves the university well prepared to pursue his big ambitions in the exercise science field, where the next step of his journey will be focused on helping others reach their own dreams and goals.
This chapter of Jaramillo’s self-described crazy, beautiful journey culminated at GW’s Commencement on the National Mall, where the kid from Texas who became a man while serving the country across the globe had his bachelor’s degree conferred near the base of the Washington Monument.
He feels fully empowered to begin his next one.
