Anyway, its another end of course reflection. Although much less, since most of my previous flowed during my 24km march. Whereas this time it felt less like an end of a course, and partly for the 28km the terrain was such that I had to constantly watch my step, and my brain probably shut down halfway from being so tired.
This 8 weeks were definitely faster than BMT, and more meaningful. What they said was right though. The life here is better, in many sense, compared to BMT. And I enjoyed my time with my bunkmates, who were an interesting bunch and I wouldn't ask for any others. Looking back, I think coming here gave me a new chance to experience things never done before, moving away from my comfort zone and finally, expanding my comfort zone. While outfield is never fun, I can at least I can cope with the environment better. Somehow I don't feel that bad over not getting to band. But the next 1.5 years... different thing maybe.
For the past 8 weeks, I suppose I have gotten stronger, both physically and mentally. I finally hit 10 pullups, something I thought I'd never achieve in my entire life. Cardio is better. Mentally, I've learnt to summon the mental strength needed to accomplish tasks. After all, NS is more mental than physical, as I've probably mentioned.
What did dominate this march was the anger I felt though. How they cheated us of the distance, how they cheated us of the rest time. When you're so tired, you become very irrational and somehow all that anger just floats up. The question I kept thinking was, "Is this the kind of leaders they're training us to be? To lie and cheat our men? All the time talking abt what makes a leader, when this was obviously not what is preached?".
On second thought, perhaps we can't fully blame them. Yes, inevitably we will use such methods in the future, and whether you're proud of it or not is a separate factor. Because undoubtedly, it served as a motivation (when it first worked). To think about your 30 mins rest. We would give them the benefit of the doubt, and grudgingly trudge on.
This last 8 weeks also gave another insight to leadership. We often (at least for me) assume the quality of the instructions with the person giving it. I.e., if we dislike the person's leadership style, we assume his instructions are also similarly flawed and therefore not beneficial to us. And vice versa. A logical fallacy, poisoning the well (is the correct term?). While on some level the person giving it has the discretion to think through and improve on it, often they can only relay messages. There's very little that they can do to change instructions when it comes from the top. But we often blame them and not the actual source. There's of course the danger that they use the excuse "I've asked and nothing happened".
This tells us something. The respect that a person commands can improve his job so much more, because the people have an innate trust of his words. Whether the instructions it self make sense is secondary. A leaders job is to move people, and the person has precisely done that. There's actually a second point, but I've forgotten what it was.
Leadership is alot about what you do when no one's looking. Like pushing for what the people want even when you can just tell them "I did it but it was rejected". One consideration is whether what the people ask is logical to the cause. But nevertheless, even if you can lie to them, can you lie to yourself. Or can you accept that you've done but let it slide by.
Honestly, I don't think the SAF is a good place to develop leadership. Maybe I'm naive in thinking that the other places will be different. But the most pertinent point is that because you have people from all walks of life, you're exposed to alot. With 'cheatcodes' springing about, its easy to succumb to these 'cheatcodes' knowing that nothing will happen to you, save perhaps a few pushups which mean nothing to a soldier. Furthermore, 'cheatcodes' are so pervasive because men are conscripted against their will, so there is more impetus for them to test the system so that they can reap maximum 'show' with minimum effort. Well I suppose other organisations will face such situations, cause many people work for the sake of working and not because they love the job. Especially in an office environment. So to deal with such 'underhand' methods, i suppose we can only fight fire with fire.
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