Good? Bad? Ugly? (Gap year experiences)

Member Name: mongrel

Product:	Gap year experiences
Date:	09/10/00 (1160 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Made me the man I am today.

Disadvantages: Made me the man I am today.

Well ,I couldn't decide whether I should post this opinion in "Gap Year Experiences" or in "Gap year Horror Stories" or even "Working Abroad". the reason for my dilemma is that I (like a right muggins) decided to use my gap year for something that would be character building.

The thing was that I was fairly well traveled, having been raised in Brazil, Argentina, Sweden and England, and having "done" a month's inter-railing round Europe and the States; I didn't really feel that I was could decently use travel as an excuse for a year off.

And I did need a year off. I was at a stage in my life where things in England had gotten a touch troublesome, socially, and so the idea popped into my head: why not run away to join the army? I'd been under the impression that this was a perfectly acceptable substitute for joining the Navy as a way of getting out of all sorts of bother, especially as I can get seasick in a medium-sized puddle.

So, I used my Swedish citizenship to get myself into the testing for the National Service, and hey presto, a few months later (by which time it was too late to back out) I found myself packing a few things and moving off to the Southern tip of Sweden, a little town called Ystad, to be precise.

My home for the forseeable future was an Anti-Aircarft Regiment barracks, in a room shared by 12 other misfits brought together by a nation's laws and not by choice. Well... except for me that was. The first impression I'd unwittingly given the rest of my troop-mates (and the whole Company for that matter) was that of either: a) a total gun-freak, or b) a total freak.

It appears that unless you really want to do something specific in the armed forces, you NEVER, EVER, willingly enroll yourself. I should have known, the golden rule when it comes to institutionalized groups is never to volunteer. Not for anything. Ever.

Was it all bad then?
Did I let myself in for 7 and a half months of being shouted at in pouring rain, sleet and snow?

Funnily enough the answer was no. Yes, the first couple of weeks were pretty tough, getting used to a language I hadn't used regularly for 8 or so years, a culture with which I'd never really accepted fully, and finding out that I really was in the army now.

However, I soon found out that because National Service is compulsory in Sweden, and because it is also a fairly liberal country, the actual regime wasn't exactly super-strict. In fact, I soon learned to basically ensure that wherever there was injustice, wherever there was work to be done, wrongs to right, tents to set up, treks to be trekked, potatoes to be peeled, missiles to be fired and boots to be polished, I would be found. Not!

Well... not always. Maybe, most of the time. A lot more than I'd have preferred prehaps. But still, the moral of the story (and I'm wrapping up because I've gotten bored with this opinion, and because if I went on I'd have to tell y'all about all sorts of drunken foolishness which could land me in jail, or on the hit-list of the Outraged Fathers for the Protection of their Daughters Commitee) is that yes National Service can be a pain, but it can also give you lots of character, diseases (no-one had told me that Swedish girls were prone to that!) and life-long friends (when you're unified by being subjected to treatment, so imbecilic it's frightening, a friendship can be formed that will have already passed all tests a friendship can pose).

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