Humans of the U: Christopher Smith
“I’m originally from Utah and grew up in West Jordan. I finished high school and started
on my associate degree at Salt Lake Community College. I had no idea what I wanted
to do with my life. When I finished my associate’s degree, it was time to pick a major,
but I still didn’t quite know what I wanted to do. I always felt the call to serve
the country in the patriotic sense. I figured that was as good a time as any and enlisted
in the Army in 2016. I was a paratrooper assigned to the infantry in the 82nd Airborne
Division.
I thoroughly enjoyed the military, but I also knew that wasn’t the ultimate 20- or 30-year career either. Ultimately, I decided on law school. I knew I’d find it intellectually stimulating and I also liked the fact that lawyers are uniquely placed to be advocates for people. It’s another scenario where you can step in and help somebody with a problem that they just can’t fix themselves. I figured it would be a good values match. It might be a little ironic with some of the public opinions of lawyers sometimes, but that’s why I got into it.
During my active duty, I was deployed to Iraq in 2020, at first to protect our embassy in Baghdad. The 82nd Airborne has a component that’s always on a standby status, where they essentially live for a period of time with their bags packed, ready to deploy if there’s a national emergency. I happened to be on that recall status– something that hardly ever gets called up—when violent protests were going on in the area. They had actually broken in the gates of a facility. As we were en route to Iraq, the U.S. killed Qasem Soleimani, one of Iran’s top military leaders, on Jan. 3. And that shifted the purpose of the deployment. We had people there to protect the embassy, but we’re also there for the bigger picture of what the fallout is going to be from taking out this general.
I left active duty later in 2020 and entered the University of Utah. I majored in economics while continuing to serve in the Army Reserves until 2022. After graduating, I entered law school two years ago.
I really enjoy courtroom advocacy. Currently, I’m planning to do civil litigation. I’m open-minded on what that looks like, but I want to be in the courtroom. I really enjoy the outdoors, so I go hiking and camping a lot with my wife. We got into skiing since starting law school, so I do a lot of that. We have a dog that we spend a lot of time with.
Big picture, the Army completely changed the trajectory of my life. It’s not like my life was going poorly before, but it helped me to realize that I could set my sights way higher than I previously had. And it taught me that my abilities were much higher than I thought, and to have the courage to go out and do hard things.”
—Christopher A. Smith is a third-year student at the S.J. Quinney College of Law. He is to be honored as the U’s Student Veteran of the Year at the Nov. 14 Veterans Day Commemoration at the Union.