Perspective: Hitting the books in Iraq's war zone

Jared Perry was headed toward a college degree when a military call-up to Iraq interrupted his junior year.

"I figured my education would be set back," said Perry, who was part of the Illinois National Guard's 1544th Transportation Company. "After all, you can't be thousands of miles away in war and still go to school."

Then he found a way.

Within months of landing in Baghdad in 2004, Perry, a specialist in the U.S. Army, was taking online classes from the University of Illinois at Springfield--the same classes he would have taken if he had stayed at home.

When he was not dodging bombs and insurgents' sniping as an Army grunt on convoy missions in Iraq, Perry was sitting at a computer screen in his military barracks, doing homework for courses such as executive decision-making.

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