After his high school graduation, Daniel Shearer knew he wanted to attend the University of North Georgia (UNG) and commission into the U.S. Army. But he wanted to take a gap year first.
"That turned into two years and then three years," Shearer said, explaining he backpacked across Europe, Asia and the Pacific region. "I learned a lot of hard lessons about who I was and what I wanted to be. The trip was very rewarding."
The reward was two-fold. The trip solidified Shearer's goal to serve his country in the armed forces. It also it introduced him to foreign cultures and their problems, which steered him to his major in East Asian studies with a concentration in Japanese and a minor in leadership.
Shearer explained his first trip to Japan impacted him after he saw first-hand the sadness and despair in the first-world country.
"I want to find a way to help but I don't know what that was yet," the then 21-year-old from Suwanee, Georgia, said. "That's when I knew I wanted to become fluent in the Japanese language and join the military."
Shearer pursued these goals with determination when he enrolled at UNG with the intent of commissioning into the Army through the Corps of Cadets. He also took advantage of a few UNG programs during his quest.
As a freshman, Shearer attended UNG's Summer Language Institutes (SLI) to jump-start his education in Japanese.
SLI is an intensive six-week cohort-style program that immerses students in a specific language such as Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Russian. Students in SLI are required to live on campus in the same halls as their classmates and tutors who are considered in the intermediate or advanced level of a specific language. This allows students to practice the language and earn eight academic credit hours at an expedited rate.
His SLI in Japanese was funded through Project Global Officer (Project GO) scholarship, which provides funds for ROTC cadets to study a critical language abroad during their college career. The goal is to help ROTC students achieve at least an intermediate level of language proficiency by the time they graduate college.
In spring 2019, Shearer earned the highly competitive Critical Language Scholarship that will fund a summer study abroad in Japan. The scholarship program is a fully-funded overseas language and cultural immersion program for American undergraduate and graduate students. Its goal is to broaden the base of Americans who study and master critical languages so they may build relationships between the people of the United States and other countries.
"I'm excited for the opportunity," Shearer said, crediting UNG and its faculty for his success. "Sawako Tsutsumi, my Japanese teacher, has been essential to me learning Japanese, and without her I would not have made it this far."
His academic studies are not the only place Shearer has contributed. He has competed with the Ranger Challenge team in the Corps of Cadets.
He also is a current member of the Georgia Army National Guard, which helped finance part of this education. Shearer said he has already gone through his basic training and enlisted services.
"I am familiar with the Army and its training," he said.
He believes that experience, his time at UNG and his study abroad trips will help him attain his overall goal of commissioning into the Army as a second lieutenant and possibly serve at a duty station in Japan. Of course, he would not have been so determined without traveling the world first.
"I think everyone needs to take the time to sit down and talk with others, to contemplate what they want out of life and who they want to be in the future," Shearer said. "If you blindly go into college or attend classes without a purpose, then your heart won't be in it. You will realize that you have to start over. It's good to get who you want to be nailed down first, then go after it."
That's exactly what Shearer, who pursued a degree East Asian studies, is doing.
