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But when asked what her most intense experience has been, she can't single anything out.
"Everyday…take your pick," Quinby wrote in an e-mail from Baqubah, Iraq.
"I've seen all kinds of people shot, from a 5-year-old with his head blown apart to a 70-year-old woman spitting up blood from internal injuries."
Quinby oversees more than 30 soldiers and is responsible for millions of dollars worth of equipment as the platoon leader for the Third Platoon in the Diyala province city.
Like Reserve Officers' Training Corps students across the country, Quinby's career with the Army began as a GW in the Georgetown-based consortium. The HOYA Battalion pulls students from Georgetown, GW, American, Catholic and Marymount universities and offers partial and full-tuition scholarships to some.
The HOYA Battalion consistently stays on par with U.S. Army expectations for the program's recruitment numbers. But the Army as a whole has been struggling to meet monthly goals this summer and narrowly exceeded July's monthly target. This was the first time the Army achieved their recruitment goal in three months.
"Everyone who signs up now knows what they're getting themselves into," said Richard Murphy, a GW law school graduate who works in recruiting for the HOYA Battalion. "The risks are very real right now."
The military has turned to raising monetary incentives for incoming recruits, relaxing previous restrictions pertaining to drug and criminal records and even bumping the maximum age for enlistment to 42. But the recruitment numbers for the Georgetown based Army ROTC program has not followed this downward national trend.
Murphy, who was editor in chief of The Hatchet, said the battalion at Georgetown is under instruction from the Army to commission 20 officers each year. Approximately one-third of other ROTC programs do not, he said.
"For four straight years we've hit our mission," Murphy said. "We don't have problems like other programs. Not only that, but GW - this past year in particular - has been the biggest part of the Georgetown program. Not only have we met our mission but GW kind of led the way."
