Center offers guidance for military veterans
Ehab Mustafa is a licensed counselor and director of the Veterans Center at Lee College.
“When I started here, I met a veteran who was 100 percent disabled. About 80 percent of his disability was PTSD. Doctors had told him that his injuries and mental issues were so severe that he shouldn’t expect to be successful in school. Nobody really expected him to even pass his classes.
“At that time, he was really struggling. But he really wanted that degree. So I sat down with him with the goal of helping him fit all the pieces together. I changed his degree plan. I reduced the number of classes he was taking. I gave him a job working here at the Veterans Center to monitor him and make sure he had all the help he needed.
“About two years ago, he graduated from University of Houston-Clear Lake with his bachelor’s degree. He’s in Germany right now with his wife and kids, starting a whole new life for himself and his family.
“The key to helping him was to understand his needs and adjust his learning strategies to fit who he had become after the injuries and the trauma that he had experienced. I never called him disabled. He was just abled in a different way.
“As a veteran, we don’t like to think of ourselves as disabled or weak. It’s not trying to be arrogant or having a big ego. It’s just that we don’t want to put limits on ourselves. I always tell the veterans that I work with, ‘If you give up, nobody will ever make you finish. The only person who can put limits on you is you.’”
— Ehab Mustafa
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