SPC Ryan Edel:
My name is Ryan Edel, I'm a Specialist and I'm currently a 98 Golf here at DLI. I'm learning Arabic and I'm going to become a voice interceptor. We basically gather intelligence, we send that intelligence on and then front line units use that intelligence to better fight the war. Being a student here at DLI, it's a little bit of a cross between being a student—at say high school or university—and being in the military.

I knew almost nothing about Arabic coming in and I thought that it would be a bit of a let down, but instead what I found is I knew so little about it going in, I just had that much more to learn about it and it's an amazing culture. I'm studying Arabic, which is a Category 4 language, and it's considered a relatively difficult language for a native speaker of English to learn.

When I was joining I was hoping I could learn maybe Chinese or Korean or a language that I at least felt I knew something about but now that I'm in Arabic—because I didn't know very much—it's given me much more room to grow and learn from that culture.

To let off steam I'm actually a runner so most of what I do involves running. Right now I'm on the Charlie Company run team. That let's off a good amount of stress right there.

The Army itself does force you to become a lot tougher—because of that orientation I know that if I set my mind to do something I can get it done and I will get it done. At some point I'd probably like to go back and do some teaching. I remember back when I was in high school in Chicago that was where I first remember becoming the kind of person I am, which eventually led to me joining the Army in the first place. Hopefully I'd like to make a difference in that kind of arena.