By Daniel Ryan
Time and opportunity have always seemed to coincide with one another. Knowing when to hold and when to fold has always been a challenging decision to make. All we can do is draw on our own life experiences and hope that we make the right choices when those opportunities come along. Building a foundation that you can trust to be the base from which all future decisions are made is essential. Learn from your experiences and the others around you. Help as many people along the way as you can. Spending your time on something worthwhile can make all the difference in your life and the lives of those around you.
I joined the ARMY when I was 19 years old. I enlisted in 2012 as an Active-Duty Infantryman because the ARMY offered me an opportunity that, at the time, I felt no other no other option would. I would get to move out of Pittsburgh, PA and see what else the world had to offer. As an Infantryman, I would be the man on the ground, on the front lines hearing and seeing the truth for myself. I would be bringing the fight directly to the enemy and making a real difference in the world. Those principles are what drove me to be the best soldier I could be while I was wearing the uniform.
Naturally, I learned quickly that achieving those goals would come at a price. There was a lot of monotonous work that needed to be done to be that soldier. I was stationed at Ft. Hood in Texas after completing Infantry On Site Unit Training (OSUT) at Ft. Benning, GA. There were a lot of hard days in the hot Texas sun that seemed to drag on forever. There were plenty of days where I questioned whether this was the opportunity I had dreamed of. I had been assigned the role of platoon Radio Telephone Operator (RTO) which I was not crazy about at the time, but I gave it my best effort anyway.
Things changed in October of 2012 when my unit received orders for a deployment to Afghanistan. My unit would spend 9 months in the Kandahar Province (July 2013 – April 2014) facilitating the drawdown of troops from southern Afghanistan. We were tasked with keeping Highway One open and protected so that the draw down could continue uninhibited. My company took that mission head on and fought incredibly hard to ensure that is what would happen. In short, that deployment was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. It was the most physically, emotionally, and mentally draining feat I have ever experienced.
It took everything we had to make sure that we made it back alright. At that point, I was 21 years old and had learned many adult-level lessons hard and fast. Lessons that some people never learn in a lifetime. When I got back to the US my reenlistment window was open and I had to make a decision. Was I staying in the ARMY or was I leaving? A lot went into making that decision. I had to weigh all my past experiences and decide what was best for me moving forward. Perhaps the biggest influence on that decision was the fact that I had felt as though I had accomplished what I had originally set out to do and then some. In fact, I was now a different person then I was when my ARMY journey first started.
I realized that I had earned seventy-five percent or better of the benefits I was ever going to accrue as a soldier. I had earned full eligibility of GI Bill and now had the opportunity for a new career if I wanted it. So, in May of 2015 I exited service as an Infantryman and was back on the streets of Pittsburgh, PA. I ended up studying at Robert Morris University in Moon Township, PA as an undergraduate student. I got started as a student there after they had invited me out to take part in the university’s oral history project. The purpose of that project was to collect firsthand accounts from veterans of the Global War on Terrorism for the history books.
I was an active student who felt right at home in the university Veterans Center. The center was full of other student veterans who had walked the same path that I was on. We could all relate to one another in a way that no one else could. Transitioning out of service is a difficult thing that takes years to accomplish. The best way I can describe it is culture shock. Leaving one culture for another is a tall order. Finding ways to adapt lessons learned to that new culture is even harder. Sitting amongst a bunch of inexperienced 18 year olds in a classroom throws an extra hook into that twist. That is the way I saw it early on anyway.
When I first started college, I was concerned that I would not value the experience the same way I so highly valued my time in the ARMY. I felt like the ARMY had provided me life experience that had put me way ahead of many of my own piers that were my age. I had a hard time believing that college would challenge me in the same way. The truth was that college would challenge me in whole different way. It challenged me in a way that I did not expect because I had not experienced it yet. As time went on, those challenges further built my character just as the ARMY had years earlier. The challenges that college and the ARMY had provided me made me the man I am today.
I started as an undecided major and eventually found that I was attracted to studying business. It seemed like all the principles of business were what drove the world’s economy. It seemed like many of the morals I had learned in the ARMY to ensure mission success could also be used to make a business succeed. I always seemed to be able to draw a connection between lessons I learned in the ARMY with what the professors were trying to teach in the classrooms. I believe that the life experience that the ARMY had given me made me connect those dots a lot quicker than some of my less experienced classmates.
In my junior year I took the advice of a great school advisor and fellow veteran affectionately known ad Buddha who told me I should take the Labor Relations courses offered by a man named Dr. Guiler. That proved to be great advice. It was clear from day one that the professor was teaching from years’ worth of real world on the job experience. I knew from my ARMY days that an opportunity to learn from someone like that was invaluable. In Labor 1 we learned all about the relationship between managers and subordinate employees. We learned that relationship is critical to the business succeeding. We also learned about the relationships unions have with management.
In Labor 2 we learned all about the grievance process and how to negotiate settlements that all the parties involved could live with moving forward. We learned how to assess employee performance and resolve issues within the company before they snowballed into bigger problems. I ended up taking every class Dr. Guiler taught while I was at RMU. His classes lit a fire in me that gave me a direction to move towards. The field of employment relations was exciting. It involved many things I wanted to learn more about, such as negotiations, labor history, the rights of workers, and management rights. It was a part of business I felt like I could really sink my teeth into.
Dr. Guiler had told the class about a graduate school major at Indiana University of Pennsylvania that focused on Human Resources and Employment Relations. He was alumni of that program at the university and spoke highly of it. This had my attention, but I was leery of it at first. I was tired of being a student and wanted to get working again. IUP offered an in-class orientation where we got to sit in on a class as it was being taught. I will never forget it because it was an arbitration class taught by Dr. Piper. As the professor asked his class questions, I could hardly keep my moth shut. I knew the answers because I had studied the process at RMU.
After weighing my options, I decided to apply to the program and got accepted. I graduated from Robert Morris University in December of 2019 with a Bachelor’s in Business Management and would start studying at IUP in January of 2020. This was a significant moment for me because I never dreamed I would be a graduate student. When I graduated from high school, I said that I would never go to college. Four years later when I started as an undergraduate student, I said I would never bother with a graduate degree. Well, three years after that I found myself starting my adventure as a graduate student (lol).
The moral of the story here is never say never because you never know what opportunity life will throw at you. If you pass that opportunity up, you will never know what that opportunity could have offered you. Being a graduate student was hard work. Much more work than undergraduate studies but because it was a focused course on a subject I enjoyed, it seemed to come easier to me. I stayed driven because I felt like everything we were talking about related to the everyday life challenges workers face in any field. It enlightened me and pushed me intellectually to a level I honestly did not know I was capable of.
I cherish the memories of my days in the ARMY. I think about those times every day in some capacity. Now, I can honestly say that I also cherish my days as a student at both Robert Morris University and Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Those experiences pushed me outside of my comfort zone and made me confident that I could handle whatever was thrown at me. Those experiences are the foundations that I trust to base all future decisions off of. In the veterans center at RMU I was able to help other veteran students along the way.
As a human resources and labor relations representative, I feel like I am the man on the ground, on the front lines hearing and seeing the truth for myself. I know that my actions have made a difference for the people I have worked with over the years. I have talked to many people who have said that they feel like they do not use their college education or that their military service has not prepared them for a career outside of the military. I always challenge those people to rethink that because of how far I know I have come because of those experiences. A big part of your life’s journey is accomplished based upon what we make of it. Figuring out what directions to go is challenging, but pursuing that challenge is what shapes us into the people we become. Do not give up because someone tells you cannot do something; overcome that challenge because you can. I sleep easier at night because I know I have spent my time on something worthwhile which has allowed me to help myself and others around me along the way. I am proud of what I set out to do all those years ago and am excited to see what life has to offer next.
Daniel Ryan, MA
US Army Infantry | Student Veteran
HR and Labor Relations Professional