Improving the Foxhole: A Medic’s Mission for Systems Change
Host Nathan James sits down with Staff Sergeant Shaun Paris, an Army medic, paratrooper, and UMGC’s 2025 Student Veteran of the Year. Shaun opens up about his family's "downward spiral" following the 2008 market crash, which led to foreclosure and survival mode.
Despite being born with a rare eye condition that twice disqualified him from military service, Shaun’s relentless persistence eventually earned him a medical waiver and a seat on a plane to Italy. He recounts tense training iterations in the Western Sahara and the pivotal "Aha!" moment in Cyprus that shifted his focus from clinical care to health care administration. Now a UMGC graduate heading to an Ivy League university for his master's, Shaun shares his "foxhole" philosophy: the responsibility to continuously improve every organization you enter and to ensure the people coming behind you are better equipped for success.
Episode Information
Shaun Paris
How was that? The motor was extremely fascinating. A very honorable thing to do. A way to serve your nation. The Army absolutely changed this trajectory of my life and the rest of my future. Learn the army values. Learn the warrior ethos. Like I'll never quit. I'll never accept a feat. I will never leave a fallen comrade. When I decided I was ready to go to college, I applied that same mindset to college.
Narrator
Welcome to the UMGC podcast Unstoppable Stories with your host, Nathan James.
Nathan James
All right. Hey, everybody. I am here with Shaun Paris. Shaun is actually a UMGC graduate with his bachelor's degree the fall 2025. He is our student veteran of the year for 2025. He is a currently a staff Sergeant in the Army, as a medic, as an instructor, and he also has seven years of experience as a paratrooper. And I'm thrilled that we have the opportunity to have him on today. Shaun appreciates you for sharing your story with us today.
Shaun Paris
Yeah, Nate, thank you so much for having me. It's great to see you again. I'm extremely excited to be here, extremely humbled to be here today on this podcast as well.
Nathan James
Absolutely. Well, so you are a student veteran of the year and are headed to an Ivy League grad school. Congrats on that. But yeah yeah yeah. But you know we know your your start was was much harder. So take us back to the 2008 market crash, the Great Recession essentially. That was a super challenging time for your family. What did survival mode essentially look like for you and your family during those those years?
Shaun Paris
For sure. So in 2008, when the market crashed, my stepdad, who was the sole provider for our household, lost his job. And that kind of like put us into this downward spiral of he was collecting unemployment, he's collecting disability, he's a veteran as well as the Marine Corps. But that was not enough for us to subside on. Right. And then that coupled with my mother, who started having depression after that, and then she started like kind of using and abusing drugs, really put us into an even even, you know, deeper downward spiral, to the point that we ended up losing the house that we lived in, that from time to time, we didn't know if we were going to have food, we didn't have food. We were pawning things just to have like a little amount of money. And then that house was ultimately foreclosed upon. And then I went to go live with my aunt and my, my grandmother on a rotational basis.
Nathan James
So eventually you joined the military. You decided to change your trajectory, I think, by joining the military. And actually, could you talk a little bit about that, like what motivated you to join the military? Was that it to change a trajectory or was there anything else?
Shaun Paris
No. So I've really always wanted to be in the military. So like I said, my stepdad was in the military. My uncle, he's still in the military today. And I was just that was always a part of our life, always that the military was extremely fascinating, a very honorable thing to do. Way to serve your nation. So I always wanted to do that. And then, you know, when I was growing up, my stepdad and I, we would take these G.I. Joe action figures and these, these toy soldier action figures, take these plastic bags, time off to each other and, like, put them into a box. Fans kind of like simulating being like a paratrooper or something like that. My great uncle was a paratrooper, World War two, and I always had his like Foot Locker and that he left behind when he passed away. So I always just really thought that was extremely fascinating. And I always wanted to join the military. And then when I got into college, I started doing ROTC in college, and I really, really that's what set it over the line to want to join the military.
Nathan James
Yeah. Now joining was a challenge. There were medical challenges that you faced in order to be able to join, right. That was like a wall that you were in right into. Talk about that.
Shaun Paris
Yeah, absolutely. So I was born with this really rare condition. It's called Duane syndrome. So there's a few different ways to have it. You can you can have it to where your eyes do not move laterally or outwards to your ears, or they don't move in to your nose, or there's another variation of it, or they don't move up and down. So for me, I have it to where neither of my eyes will move outwards, towards my ear, to the muscle that moves them out. Just just not connected. So, you know, if I want to if I want to look over to my right, I really have to move my head a lot more because of that. That right eye doesn't have that range of motion that it's supposed to have. That coupled with your business, which is where my eyes were misaligned when I was born. And then I had a surgery as a baby, another one when I was around, like kindergarten and another one as well. I'd help correct that. So that was a huge issue, trying to join the military. When I was in ROTC, when I was in college, I wanted to join the National Guard. That's what everyone around me was doing. They were doing that, and then they were getting scholarships from the National Guard and then scholarships for university and then commissioning through that way. So I wanted to do that, and I tried to enlist in the National Guard, the Kentucky National Guard, 11 Charlie, a indirect fire infantryman or a motorman. And I couldn't when I went to medical, the medical in Louisville, they immediately flag me and set me back to a consultant. I got my consult paperwork, came back, and I was medically disqualified. So then we tried again. When you're looking at qualification to the military, this category is called your pool. He's. So we picked a job that had a little bit more relaxed standards when we're looking at the pool. He's. So then I went back again. This time I was going to be like a transportation specialist or something like that. And again, I was disqualified from service. So that really that really set me personally in a in my own personal downward spiral. When I was in college, I was, you know, had this huge ambition to join the military, wanted to join the military. And now I'm looking at literally not being able to not being able to join the military due to this, I, that I couldn't control. And then I went to the Air Force and the Air Force kicked it back as well, because each branch has their own medical standards of fitness. So the National Guard is its own standard of fitness. And then the Air Force. And then I eventually got up with the right recruiter, an Army recruiter that was able to send me to a different maps. I went to the maps in Knoxville, got a second opinion if you would, went to a consult down in Knoxville, and then I was able to get a waiver and join the Army back to duty. Army from Knoxville.
Nathan James
Shaun. That's serious determination.
Shaun Paris
Yeah, yeah.
Nathan James
Absolutely right. I mean, at least that's not once but twice. I knew about the the first one, but I didn't know it was it was twice that you were disqualified and you just kept coming back for more in your army too. I can't help but be reminded of Captain America at this point, Shaun, because that's essentially what was happening to him in another way in the movie. I don't know if you've seen it, but he wouldn't give up. And that sounds a lot like you. So that's that's an admirable Shaun. Wow. And I'm glad you made it.
Shaun Paris
Yeah. Me too. The Army's really, like, absolutely changed the trajectory of my life and the rest of my future.
Nathan James
Yeah, yeah. So you you you're in at this point, right? You're in the army. How did it live? Up to the childhood dreams that you had grown up with? Was everything that you thought it would be, or was there anything that surprised you?
Shaun Paris
It was. It was pretty challenging, honestly. So first things first. I joined the Army. I have to get glasses and they don't issue me any glasses. So they have to go through all the basic training with no glasses because you can't wear your civilian ones. When I joined the Army, I had some glasses. They were gray and red. You get our black glasses during basic training and the backlog at Fort Benning at the time where I did my basic combat training for glasses was extreme. So during the whole time I was in basic combat training, no glasses, just going through pretty much blind. The only exception that they made was when I went to qualify, so I couldn't qualify and they asked why I told my couldn't see, so they let me use my glasses to let everyone use their glasses for qualification day. And other than that, I went through and with no glasses at all, and I wouldn't get glasses until like the third or fourth week into the combat medic training. So graduated basic training, went into combat training on my glasses. I think we'll see. And I formed a lot better now. One thing like I was talking about before, you know, I always wanted to do that, that airborne thing. So I always like, reminisce on on putting those bags on those GI Joe's and fanning them over. And the airborne was super fascinating. I mean, that's, you know, when you're thinking about the Army, you have this mind, this, you know, super soldier in your in your brain and this paratrooper. And when I came in the army, if you get a medical waiver, I automatically disqualifies you from getting any type of like additional schooling or anything like that in your contract. So if you were to get a medical waiver, you can't come in and do like a Ranger contract, like you're an airborne contract or any any type of cool follow. It's just not possible because you had to get the medical waiver. So I'm just, you know, chugging along, thinking that I'm going to have to wait until I've been in the Army for, you know, that through to four years and then re-enlist and they get airborne school through a re-enlist? Well, when I was in combat medic training, they offered five airborne slots and then I think 3 or 4 slots to go to Rasp, which is a Ranger assessment selection program. And I was able to do academically well enough and be physically fit enough to compete for an airborne slot, which I won, and it changed my assignment. I was originally going to go back and forth Benning to this task force that they had just stood up, but instead it changed my assignment and it put me on assignment to Italy. And then so when I graduated combat medic training, I went to airborne School for the three weeks, and then I immediately went to Italy. So that was really amazing. It was I kind of knew more or less what I was getting into, because I had done the ROTC thing in college for three semesters. So I had a respect for, you know, the Army values and the kind of the culture and the army. So I kind of knew what I was getting into as far as whether or not it was like a culture shock, but it was definitely culture shock to go through basic training and to get broken all the way down and rebuilt up. As a soldier, having these army values and having the warriors eat those and things like that.
Nathan James
Now, you mentioned that, you know, you were stationed in Italy for seven years is what you've said in the past. So to most people, that sounds like a I mean, civilians, you know, that sounds like a vacation, but you were actually deployed or training 70% of that time, right? And so that's intense. What was the reality of the operational tempo on even your personal life while you were out in Italy for seven years?
Shaun Paris
Yeah, absolutely. So the unit that I went to is airborne, you know, the 1/73 is the only airborne unit in, in Europe, the only standalone infantry brigade combat team over there as well. But they train a lot. They turn a lot. And when I first got there, we were kind of underneath in this training command to this training division. So we were turning all the time. We were going to Germany to train and going all around other places in Europe to train. When I first got in there and then the government shut down. So we stopped training for the time that the government shut down. This would have been the beginning of 2018, and then it opened back up, and we're training and training and training and going on trainings and then doing like little trainings in Germany, or little trainings in the areas of Italy that we could train. But they're extremely strict on the training that you can actually do in Italy. So a lot of it is now outside of the confines of, of that country. So then, you know, you have to get the bang for your buck. So if you're going to send people to go train another country, you want to maximize the amount of time you're spending there. So we would be gone and we would gone for 2 to 3 weeks, sometimes a month at a time. There was one time that we went after Covid where we were in the field for like almost 80 days.
Nathan James
Gotcha. So, Shaun. All right. Do you have a military service related story where you found yourself and your team in a tight spot?
Shaun Paris
Yeah, yeah. So, well, we were in Morocco. It would have been June, I think 20, 21. And we're taking part in this yearly exercise, African Lion. And we're in the part of Morocco extremely like south and west in the Western Sahara, kind of a disputed area as well. So we're out there doing training with the Moroccans and then doing our own training as well. So we were doing a company patrol and it's nighttime in certain time iteration, and we're just patrolling what essentially is just the vast emptiness of the of the Western Sahara desert. And, you know, keep in mind, we're just training. So we have blanks, we have blank firing adapters on our weapons, all of the medical equipment that I'm carrying, it's all training. It's just, you know, to apply to training, the only real medical equipment of keeping is, like, fluids and stuff like that. If there were to be heat casualty or something similar to that, you know, MFP pen and medications and stuff, but I don't have anything to stop bleeding or to do any real aid. Should there have been something like that just happen because it's a training environment, right? It's supposed to be controlled. So we're patrolling out there in this vast emptiness of the desert, and the Border Patrol rolls up on us with all their technicals. And again, it's nighttime. So we're, you know, under the cover of darkness, we have our night vision optics, and we're walking and patrolling and the Border Patrol rolls up on us with their technicals. They're extremely bright lights. And they start shouting at us in French. And so I took French in elementary school. I took it in high school, I took in college. I was pretty well versed, and I'm probably about in the middle of the patrol. And they run up on some. They get in the front of the patrol. So they're yelling at us, asking who we are, telling us to put our weapons down and stuff to that effect. So I run up there, I'm kind of in the middle. I run up to the front of the patrol, but by the time that I get there, they realized that we were Americans and like, without saying anything, just turn it and drove off. But in that, like 30s or so, we didn't know if we were going to come under fire from these, these, you know, Border Patrol or what the deal was going to be because they had, you know, stopped, they had turned their weapons over on us. And we're like, essentially engaging us up until they realized who we were and just pulled off very it was very intense because, you know, if something were to happen, we didn't have any real class date with us or real medical supplies. We only had the training stuff.
Nathan James
Yeah, that's a close call. I know that got the heart rate up in a in a really big way. Oh, wow. Well, I'm glad that worked out. And so eventually you have a basically an moment while training with NATO allies in Cyprus. Right. That shifted your focus from a lot of the clinical coworker you were doing as a medic to administration ministration. What did you see on the ground there that made you realize you wanted to fix systems rather than only treat patients specifically?
Shaun Paris
No, absolutely. I think that, you know, anything you're doing in healthcare stems from the policies that you have. Right? So I didn't have an appreciation for that when we went to Cyprus both times that we went. So we went there. We were put on this mission to go and just deliver essentially a battlefield casualty care class for the Cypriots. And because of the funding that we had at the time, we were not allowed to go there and certify them anything. We were not allowed to go there and really do anything apart from do some informal training with them and then turn around and give them like certificates of appreciation or participation. Right. So because of the funding that we were using, we were not allowed to go over there and give them like combat lifesaver certificates or anything from like the gates or the joint trauma system or like the Defense Health Agency or anything official. So the provider and I created this course, we just kind of repurposed some of the the open source information that's out there and put it into this combat casualty care course. And we went over and delivered it, and they were extremely receptive. They loved there. A lot of it was pretty new to them, a lot of it. Some of it was review, but we were we were there training some of their medical personnel, some of their medics, nurses, special forces that they had. And then we went back and we trained non-medical personnel. So we trained a lot of their, their armor soldiers. But what I saw there was that, you know, what we were delivering from the from our standpoint was just really super routine instruction. But for them, they never seen any of that. And I took a minute to reflect. And I just thought to myself, you know, the only reason that we are this advance is because there's been policies put into place to ensure that we're standardizing how we're doing training, ensuring that we're doing it annually and that we're up to date on it and stuff like that. And if you can go and you can influence policy in all these different places, you know, they can stand up and they can do this training themselves. And that's what we did. We gave them the slide decks that we had, and we gave them the lesson plans that we had created ourselves, and we gave them all these things to enable them to put on that class over and over. And the second time that we went, we had a few of the Cypriots with us that helped, like assistant instruct with us. So they went to the first class. We kept up with them, they met us and we went over some of the things, and we not only delivered the class, but we spent some time with the assistant directors and told them, hey, this is some of like our instructor methodology, and it really gave them all the tools that they needed to to continue this program. And what I've seen come out of the Cypriot National Guard on social media is that they've kept doing this program. I've seen them do it at least two more times. So that was really an all moment is, you know, you can give someone you can just put on this training, right, and then leave and then they forget about it. Or you can really enable them to be able to put it on themselves by sharing that knowledge and kind of focusing on that, that regulatory policy or that that actual policy of implementing it through the force to get them, you know, as widespread and as up to date as possible.
Nathan James
Folks, by the way, look, this is listening to Shaun Paris on Unstoppable Stories here at UMGC and want to make sure that you like and subscribe. So don't forget to do that in order for to get more content on ensemble stories, just like Shaun's. Okay, so this a hot moment that you had, right? As far as working with systems and creating systems that provide more effective health care, that's played a role in how you came to UMGC. Even the program that you selected here. What was your bachelor's degree in, again? Was that health care administration or was it information systems management?
Shaun Paris
Yeah. So the bachelor's that I got from UMGC was the health services management. And then I got the undergraduate that they offer, which is health information management data analysis.
Nathan James
There it is. Okay. Yeah. So there's the connection. So you're able to kind of take that theme run with that. It sounds like that was a launch pad for your academic journey which is special. You know that's really great going into your experience with college. I know you briefly attended college after high school, and at the time you did poorly, but what was different about your mindset when you enrolled at UMGC? Because by the time you came around to us, it was a whole different ball game.
Shaun Paris
No, absolutely. So let's all back it up to before I joined the Army. So I graduated from high school, and what they were doing at the time is, you know, not necessarily forcing people to go to college, right? You can't you can't force people to do that. But highly suggesting that you go no matter what, if you know what you want to do, if you just have a kind of an idea of what you want to do, you should go to college. And I went to college, and I wanted to be a doctor the first time that I went to college. I thought that was really cool about, you know, medicine was cool. I thought anything medical related was cool. I went to a in Louisville, Kentucky. All the high schools are magnets, so you'll go to a high school that has like some sort of health allied health sciences or or one that does technology or I guess I think now there's like ones that do pre-law and stuff like that. So I went to one that did medical. So then I was like, hey, I really like this medical thing. And I've always been the type of person that like anything I do, I would like to do the most that I can with this. So, you know, I want it to be a doctor. So I went to the university, Eastern Kentucky University, and just absolutely was underprepared. I was not mature enough to balance my core schedule. I was not resilient enough to be able to bounce back from underperforming on an exam or an assignment. That, coupled with not being able to get in the National Guard because of this medical condition that I had. Now that I'm making excuses, I mean, I just did I did poorly because I just was underprepared in the grand scheme of things. And then I joined the Army. And like I was saying before, you know, learn the army values, learn the warrior ethos learned, you know, the tenets of the warrior ethos. Like, I'll never quit, I'll never attempt to feet, you know, I will never leave a fallen comrade always put some issue first. So those those four things really resonated in me the entire time that I've been in the military. And then when I decided I was ready to go to college, I applied that same mindset to to college. So that coupled with the first two classes that I took, which were at the time really, really what I needed to do. So the first class that I took was pace 111, which I think is I think that is really great. I think that being one of the first classes that you have to take when you start or restart your journey of colleges. Incredible. I took a lot away from that. Professor Gilroy did an incredible job, and then I also had IFS three something or another. So it was it was an upper level course. Now, that course really, really, really was a lot for someone going back to college. So they had us writing these extensive papers and APA format, which I hadn't done in seven years since before I joined. And by then it was a different format and stuff like that. But the professor, Doctor Taylor, she was incredible and I still talked to her to this day. She was she was incredible. She was extremely patient. The first assignment that I turned in, I got to be, which I was extremely upset with because, you know, like I said, I wanted to do the best that I could. So I reached out to her and asked her, how can I do better with my writing? Or what are some of the things I need to kind of clean up when it comes to formatting? And she was on top of it. She went, she ripped my paper apart line by line, gave me an incredible and comprehensive feedback. And for that I've been just really ever grateful. And when I won that, awarded the university, I reached out to her. I told her, hey, I would not be winning this award. I would not be getting into grad school if it was not for you. And the patience and the, you know, expertise that you gave me when when I needed it most, like restarting college. So the mindset that I kept was just, you know, putting the mission first, not quitting, not accepting the fee, just kind of putting those tenets of the warrior ethos into college along with the army values like duty. You have to do what you have to do, right, and stuff like that.
Nathan James
All right. So success often requires sacrifice. And that's definitely been the case for you. Now, how did you balance family life, school work all simultaneously ensuring that you didn't burn out and also maintain those very important personal relationships that you had? How'd you do it all?
Shaun Paris
No. It was it was very, very hard, even though I moved up to staff. So I had a little bit more free time. I had a little bit more predictability in my schedule and stuff like that. It was still extremely challenging. I'm married. I had a I have a four year old now, but at the time he would have been to some balancing that on top of work. And, you know, the Army keeps rolling along. So there's never a dull moment balancing that on top of schoolwork. And I had I did school full time the entire time, the two two classes at a time. It was very busy. It was very, very, very busy. And the way that I got through it honestly was just trying to play as hard as I was working. So I really asked my wife, I really needed someone to be that foundational piece for me while I was doing the school. So she was taking a lot more responsibility, doing a lot more stuff at home, doing a lot more stuff with our with our son. But to kind of compensate for that, we would, you know, go out and do a vacation, you know, or just do something really grandiose. So that's kind of how I balanced it was, hey, while we're working, we're going to work extremely hard. Both of us. Like she was working extremely, extremely hard to raise our son, who at that time we were finding out that he's autistic. So that was a challenge. And then me working all day in the coming home and having to do class and stuff like that. So I was asking her to do a whole lot, but to kind of compensate for just going on vacations, and we went on a couple really incredible vacations. So that's really how we how I personally prevented the burnout. Was just trying to play as hard as I was working.
Nathan James
Yeah, yeah. And I'm sure those getaways were super important just for connecting time, refreshing time, reconnecting time, you know, with your family, like re-energizing the batteries. And I mean the scenery out there. I'm sure some of those vacations had to have been absolutely gorgeous. I don't know if it's any vacations in Italy, for example, but I'm just thinking of locations that I think that you may have gone to that may have been like, I'm sure, just amazing.
Shaun Paris
Yeah. So while we were in class. So I always kind of had this mantra of trying to play as hard as we were working and that kind of, you know, to compensate for, for the fact that I was in this place where we were going on no notice deployments, to which I went on, where we were going to the field all the time, or when we're in garrison, we were jumping. Right, because you have to maintain jump currency, and the place that we jump is two hours away. So that would be its own full day events, or sometimes two days or three days, depending on if I was pulling any duties, which a lot of times I was pulling duties, especially ground duties. You got to get people out of the airplane and it takes everyone to do it. So I put a lot of ground duties and, you know, be out there for two days consecutively or three days consecutively. So to kind of, you know, make up for that. We were just doing a lot of cool stuff. So we went to Dubai twice, we went to Egypt, we went to the Maldives, which was really incredible, and it was the Maldives when I was actually in class. So I had my finals coming up for the IFS course. So I was in there just typing out my final paper at the hotel in the Maldives. So that was that was really amazing. So we go out to the beach in the day, and then I come back, put my son to bed, and then I'll just be down there plugging away at school. But I'm a big believer and you know, you got to get out there and have some fun. If you're putting in all that, that work and effort. Otherwise you're you're really you're really gonna burn yourself out.
Nathan James
Yeah. No kidding. So you get to the end of your degree ultimately in the fall of 2025. And a couple of cool things coincided all at once, and I got to witness it all. So you graduated obviously, by that same year, you submitted for Student Veteran of the year. And for folks that don't know, you see, we have a student veteran of the year. Every every year one is selected and I work in the Veterans Initiatives office. My team oversees that selection process. And Shaun Paris was selected for 2025. And so we had the we had the really great honor and privilege. And it was fun to host Shaun. And so you were named UMGC Student Veteran of the year. After coming from a background that you have, all the challenges that you had were even. I mean, you're talking about having to pawn things to even eat, or what did it feel like to stand on that stage and to speak? You gave an amazing speech, inspiring one about the importance of service. What did it feel like to have all of that, that that academic recognition, after everything you had been through, considering your background, where you come from?
Shaun Paris
It was really incredible. It was really incredible. Thank you for the compliment on the speech. I really worked hard on, you know, trying to recite and give that. But, you know, it was really incredible and to be really honest, for a long time and even now, honestly, I try to take my past and just stuff it real deep down in my rucksack. Right? And just not even acknowledge it, because I kind of came from this place in the Army where, like, not a lot of people really, really care, like what you went through. People really care about the output that you're doing right there on the spot or what you're, you know, putting out into the army. And if you're not doing so, the last thing that people want to hear is, is an excuse. Right? So it was really incredible, though. It was really, really incredible because I think a byproduct of the way that I was raised is a really intense imposter syndrome. So I just always thought like, hey, I'm not going to be able to do this, or am I going to be able to do that, or I'm not going to be able to do this and, you know, submitting that for that award and then getting it was really just an incredible experience from the time that I submitted for it to getting the notification to find Maryland to meet you and the team, it was just really amazing. And then to get up there on the stage, even though we had practiced it a couple of times, it was just really something that I can't even put into words. Honestly, it was just so amazing that not even the best of dreams would would really do it justice. It was just such an incredible experience. And, you know, to be honest, like, I would have absolutely not been where I was if not from upbringing, right? Because I guess through it I did learn about resiliency and stuff coming into the Army, but also just the help and support that I had from my spouse and the help and support that I had from my education coordinator, Hannah. She was really incredible. She proofread my paper and gave me a lot of constructive criticism, which is good because, you know, the refining process and the editing process is extremely important when you're writing anything. So can you tell me what I needed to hear in the time to to submit the product? Is all that hard work that I had been putting in in addition to school, and at that time I was applying to grad school too. So in addition to applying to grad school and then also at the time I was doing it in advanced EMT class at work. So on top of that, and I was teaching all those things at once as it started to line up and I started winning things and getting into grad school and, and passing these exams for advancing and just doing all the things and maintaining a good GPA in my last classes and stuff like that. It was really just an amazing experience that made all those extremely late nights and sacrifices that I had to make here, you know, missing stuff at home or missing stuff with my son because I was glued to the computer or, coming in super early to do stuff before I work or working through my lunches or working through not days off, but we get cycle reset. So working through my cycle of reset days, instead of taking care of administrative or personal things, it really just made it all come together and made it seem like it was a post that I made had really been a good one at the end. Like it was. It was worth all the all the things that I had done to to make it that far.
Nathan James
And you a couple of weeks later you were able to come back up to the area to the DC, Maryland, Virginia area at College Park and for your graduation and your wife and your son, you're able to bring along this time around. And I just remember meeting them and, you know, I was standing right there as they watched you cross the stage and yeah, I everything that you said makes it makes a lot of sense, given what I saw. How how proud your wife was seeing you cross the stage and take a thousand pictures. That we made sure that we made you take, you know.
Shaun Paris
Yeah. He was amazing. I really appreciate all the hospitality that you all showed to us. We really, really enjoyed it. And that was another example of playing hard because we went to DC for the graduation. Then we went to New York to visit New York, and then we went back to Italy to spend Christmas in Italy. So we were playing just as hard as good work, you know, those kind of a culminating vacation of, hey, we've put in all this effort and we are now reaping the benefit of all the effort that we put in. I graduated from school, I got with award, I got into grad school, and things are lined up now in December. So let's take a break, not bring our computers, not be on our phones and just and just go and enjoy a family vacation. So that was a really amazing opportunity to.
Nathan James
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You never want to downplay milestone moments like that. You know, especially I think we all wrestle with elements of imposter syndrome here, there and the other you know, you can you can downplay your accomplishments as that and the other. But know like you all as a family, you know, made the most of it. And that's a time to party hard for sure. So yeah, it definitely puts a smile on the face. Shaun. Well, so having completed your bachelor's degree, you already said you had applied for grad school and good news, you had been accepted to Dartmouth, which is incredible, to pursue your Master of Health Administration. So just staying on track with that journey, what is the ultimate goal for you that you hope to achieve with that degree? Maybe especially once you transition out of the Army?
Shaun Paris
When I when I graduate, I'll be graduating in 2028 and I'll still have about seven years left in the Army then. So the first thing that I want to do is just reinvest into the Army. You know, the military is investing in me to do this education. I want to give back to the military. So I want to take some of the things that I learned there. And, you know, Dartmouth is so known for promoting variations in health care delivery. They're really known for shared decision making to two things of which I think the Army medical community could extremely benefit from. So I do want to try to implement some of those policies or practices and Army medicine, just wherever, whatever organization that I happen to be part of at that time. And then after the Army, I would really like to do something that gives back. So either working as a guest for the federal system for like Defense Health Agency and helping them kind of reshape policy, especially policy with like the military in Europe, where access to care is kind of its own burden. Because, you know, when we were in Italy, we didn't have a lot of different diagnostic tools. We have a lot of resources. Right? So we have to send people up to Germany to see longitude, to do certain things, or we had to send them out on the Italian economy so that access to care was was greatly hindered. But I think I would like to do something with like access to care or something with quality control and improvement or something like that. Otherwise, I like to do healthcare consulting because I think, you know, our job is like a sergeant in the Army. Once you're a platoon sergeant or you're a first sergeant or me when I was at staff, you are an advisor to the actual officer. That's their doing, doing what they're doing, which is, you know, extremely comparable to being a consultant. Right. You're consulting this person who's making the final decision on, you know, what right could look like or what some of the options that they can do is. So either if I can't get into the system or if there's nothing out there at the time, that healthcare consulting would be another good one, because I like that complex problem solving aspect of it.
Nathan James
Yeah, yeah. So your big advocate for joining the military before going to college, right. So why do you believe that gap of service is so valuable for young people compared to going straight to school potentially accruing debt? Why is that that gap period. You think so important?
Shaun Paris
So I think I think that when you graduate college, a lot of the time people change what they want to do. They want they change what they want to do after after college, they change whether or not they want to be in college. A lot of times they're underprepared. They don't. They don't have the mindset to go to college and stuff like that. So people go to college and they change their degrees, or they go to college and they drop out, or they just go to college or they don't complete it, which is one of the worst things that you could do, because now you have all this debt and all this investment that you've made, but then nothing to show for it. And there's no absolutely no return on investment. However, I think that if you were to go into the military, you get a career for four years. I guaranteed four years or 6 or 3 or whatever. But, you know, even up to eight because everyone does eight no matter what, you know, if you do it active or if you do it on the independent ready reserve or individual ready reserve the IRR. So you have that. If you're in the military for three years, you get the GI Bill. While you're in the military, you can use tuition assistance. If you still want to pursue school. You learn skills, you learn interpersonal relations. You you learn tact. You build discipline. There's just so many things that the military as a whole gives you that then you can get out and turn into a career. And if you do four years, you get out your 22. You can just as easily go to college and finish it when you're, you know, 24, 25, 26, depending on how much transfer credit you can get from your JSTOR or from other stuff like that, and still be able to go out there with now the skills that you've learned with now, the discipline that you have with now, the mindset that you've learned from the military in addition to the experience that you get while you're in the military, in addition to now the degree that you've gotten, which you're probably spending a minimal amount for, if any at all. Now you're really equipped with all the tools to go out there and make and shake the world, honestly.
Nathan James
Yeah, shake the world. I like that you have talked about and okay, you have gave an amazing speech, first of all, for the Student Veteran of the year ceremony, for the veteran ceremony that we had there. And he talked about this concept of the foxhole. Right. And I thought it was such a powerful concept, especially because it emphasizes not just looking out for yourself, but looking out for those who are coming behind you. I just think that's such an important concept in our world today, where we tend to look out for ourselves. Life is good if I am good, right? But I think your idea of the foxhole really challenge that to the core in a way that I thought was so powerful inspirational. Please share with us what your thoughts on on on this foxhole concept, please, as far as especially what you learned as a pulling a lesson from the military.
Shaun Paris
Naturally. So one, thank you for the compliment on the speech. I really well, I did a lot of rehearsing and stuff like that for the speech. Some glad that you liked it, but so for the foxhole. So when we're talking about improving your foxhole, that comes from being out there in this fighting position, so you've established a patrol base or even established somewhere that you're going to essentially sit and defend. So the first thing you're going to do is you're going to dig in fighting position. And I've I've dug a lot. I dug my fair share of high positions in my day training all the time, especially up in Germany where the ground is kind of rough. We're out there digging and digging all day and quite a bit. So the first thing you're going to do with your foxhole is make a hasty finding position. So you're going to keep digging, keep digging, keep digging nonstop until you have this minimum amount of safety from your enemy. Right. And then once you get that minimal amount of safety from your enemy, you can kind of relax a little bit, but then you need to start improving upon your foxhole. So then you're thinking about, you know, putting some wood out in front of us or some timber, some logs building up the sides with dirt or putting foliage over the top, doing some stuff in the back. And then once you get up and move, either you're going to, you know, sweep away that foxhole or if you're leaving it for the next people to come in, then, you know, they have that foxhole dig in. Then improve upon and make it even better for them. And that concept I really got from one of the providers that we had. So we had a provider that came in and an issue that we had in Italy with our with our medical section was supply room. The supply room was an absolute mess. Their supplies everywhere. It was just organized. You would walk in and it would take you 30 minutes just to find the one piece of equipment that you're looking for or, you know, whatever types of medical equipment or even just Band-Aids, it would take forever to find stuff. So he came in and he put all the leaders in and he said, hey, here's the deal. No one's going to go home until we have this baseline of cleanliness and organization done in this supply cage. So we're going to we're going to put away, at a minimum, all the medical supplies. Nothing should be on the floor. Everything will be on the shelf. So that's what we did. And we did that I mean probably until 8:00 at night. Then once we hit that, we came back the next day and he said, all right, here's what we're going to do today. We're going to go through and realign all this stuff to be in a way that makes sense according to your care algorithm. So then we did that, then we took off, then we took off all of the medical supplies, and we wrote on each side of the box what's in there? So no matter how you put the box back, you can still see exactly what's in that box. So there's no ambiguity and you're not wasting your time looking for medical supplies. And each day we would do something and build upon it and build upon it and build upon it. And what I came to realize is that like a foxhole, like you're improving that foxhole, you need to improve all the organizations that you're in. So with that medical supply cage, we're improving it. Then the idea is that you go somewhere else as a leader, and you can implement that in your new place. You know exactly what right looks like as far as organizing stuff and getting that that Shoei or that supply cage to look how it needs to look. And then you're going to empower your subordinates to learn that way. They're going to learn what right looks like, and then they're going to grow up and become leaders, and then they're going to do that. And really, I think that you can do that in any organization that you work in. So even an organization like mine right now with the classroom, you can look at how can we set up the classroom for for more success or how can we reallocate some of those supplies like printing and paper and wear and tear on the printer by taking what should be three counseling for a failed exam and combining it into one page. Now we're saving ink, now we're saving paper. Now we're saving aware and tear on the printer. So the need to just like continuously improve the organization that you're in or the room that you're in, or even if you're out in combat or in the field training the foxhole that you're in, it just never ends. And that's something that I really wanted to emphasize that day that I spoke at the mayor of the university.
Nathan James
Yeah, that's and I've seen Shaun do this in real life, even in academics and his classes. Shaun. It's remarkable. It's it's it's literally like, it's not even enough for you to just pass the class, like most of us are thinking, you know, hey, I want to pass the class. And then if I pass class, it's good. I've seen Shaun where it's not enough that he passed the class. He wants the whole class to pass with, and he'll do what it takes to make sure everybody can get across the finish line to. Because he's looking out for the folks around him to even when it comes to that journey of school. And I think probably in every area of your life. So, Shaun, you're an inspiration and I really feel like I can't thank you enough for taking the time to share your story with us today. You, sir?
Shaun Paris
Yeah. Thank you. I really appreciate the time and again, extremely humbled to be here and to be able to talk to you for a bit with this podcast. Yeah.
Nathan James
Yeah, you got it. You got it. Well, and to everybody listening and watching thank you. And remember to like and subscribe. Take a moment to do that. Comments. Let us know what you thought and and you can catch us. Remember on previous seasons season one for example. And make sure you can watch on any of your preferred podcast channels. Right? Spotify, Apple. We're there. And so make sure to check out even more episodes. In the meantime, we'll be here next time for the next Unstoppable story.