Neil Kelliher ‘23
Interviewed by Jonathan Peterson ‘23
Let’s do an introduction!
I’m from Northern Virginia. I graduated from UVA in 2015 with an engineering degree, then joined the Army and went to Germany. After five years I came to law school.
Why law school?
The interest started in undergrad. After graduating, I was faced with two choices, getting my JD and then joining the military as a JAG officer, which is a good life although I don’t know if it’s for me, or joining the military and doing something a little more exhilarating then getting my JD. I had a really interesting time in the Army, but once I started realizing that I was more interested in pushing through challenging problems and advocating for soldiers, it became clear that I should just go to law school.
Interesting military stories?
Well, right before I went to Germany, I got engaged. I immediately had to tell the Army that I had a date set for a wedding a year out. They were very generous and worked around it. Then, events arose and my unit got tacked on to an exercise that we initially weren’t going to be doing. This was a month and a half before the wedding. So, way too late to change anything with it. The exercise was a ten-country live fire that was supposed to happen the DAY of my wedding. So, I had to do it. Fortunately, we were able to work it out with the other countries like “what if we had this platoon go this day instead of this day?” They didn’t really care too much, so we ended up having another platoon go the day after my wedding. I had my wedding on a Saturday. I flew out at 6 AM Sunday morning from Dulles to London Heathrow. Then I took a bus to London Stansted. I spent a night in the Stansted lobby, then took a flight to Budapest, and then a van ride from Budapest to the training area to do the live fire. It was about 36 hours of consecutive traveling the day after my wedding. Quite the honeymoon. I was only hungover for the first 30 hours.
How did your wife feel about the honeymoon?
She was very understanding. It was more the week when we had to figure out what was going to happen with the wedding that was tough. Like, what’s going to happen if we can’t get the exercise moved? Am I going to have a stand-in at my own wedding? A cardboard cutout?
What was your experience training for the military?
Honestly, the hardest part was learning how to deal with boredom. You go your whole life with something to do, always trying to figure out how to balance things. Then, you get there and there’s one event that has to happen today and 85 people have to do it. No cell phone or anything. It’s boring. You just have to find ways to use boredom to benefit you. Either trying to develop relationships or honing skills, usually.
How have you carried that experience with boredom into your day-to-day life?
Before joining the Army, I was always on my phone. Social media, constant news updates, the works. I found it harder to read books because they didn’t have the constant pull for attention. At most I’d read articles, but I never really dug deep into things. So it’s not so much a skill, but I now feel fundamentally inured to some levels of boredom. That’s definitely attributable to the Army. I don’t use my phone in the same way anymore at all. I just feel less desire to be bombarded with information and more at peace with something longer and more meaningful, like a book or actual interaction. I’m just more comfortable with a slowed down pace of activity.
What kind of genres do you usually read?
Some sort of either business, or energy, or computer-type of reading. Typically stuff written by journalists. I read on my Kindle and I find that Amazon’s algorithm will have the next book lined up to sell to me within a few pages of starting a new book. And I play right into the system by buying it. It’s like they know they’ve got $400 worth of books down this pipeline I’m interested in and they have no interest in recommending anything new until the well runs dry. And I have no interest in looking for anything else because I’m really interested in the books they recommend. So a large portion of what I read is whatever the algorithm says is next. If they wrote a book about that algorithm, I guarantee it would pop right up on my feed and I would read it.
Are the books more descriptive or telling us what should be done?
Depends on what the algorithm is in the mood for, it knows I’ll read them all. I’ve read some that are very direct. Like, “we should expand our nuclear energy capacity.” There are also more nuanced ones detailing what’s going on in a particular field and the possibilities there.
I feel like you probably don’t have a favorite author in this genre?
If it’s anyone, it’s the coder who writes that algorithm. Someone who wears flip flops to work making $800k a year for Amazon with a “Neil Kelliher” file.
Lightning round!
Favorite food?
Mexican.
Any particular dish?
That’s like choosing your favorite child.
Pet peeve?
Long hypotheticals that don’t lead anywhere. The question you know from word one isn’t taking you anywhere but takes four minutes to get there.
Favorite word?
I’ve been watching the Great British Breaking Show, so I’ll just say “RAW!” or “Stodgy” in contexts that don’t make sense.
If you could be one animal, which animal and why?
An octopus. Their camouflage is fascinating.
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nmk4vp@virginia.edu