The HPSP scholarship was the reason I went. Maybe I was more kindly disposed toward it going in than I would have been if it weren't for Eliot, but if the program hadn't existed, I don't think that's a choice I would have made.

[Julien doesn't need to say anything. Just listening is fine.]

My father joined up to get out of a bad situation. His family was --

[He shakes his head.]

-- less than respectable, to put it mildly. The military was his way out.