A tourist in the Army

I still haven't come to a neat and tidy conclusion about my year in the military. Thus far my thoughts have been, "largely a waste of time in terms of actual skills learned and time spent, but rather fascinating in terms of what I learned about Taiwanese society and myself."

Paradigm shifts are a part of life. For some it is something frequent, for others it's rare. Some shifts are voluntary, others involuntary. Changing jobs. Jumping to a different industry. Moving to another country. Graduating from college and entering the workforce. Having a kid. Getting a promotion.

For most people, voluntary paradigm shifts come gradually. Nothing can prepare you entirely for parenthood, but the mindset of a young couple surprised by an unwelcome and unexpected pregnancy is incomparable to a (oftentimes) married partnership for which it was part of a planned process. Someone who sees her job as a long-term thing with a path up the corporate ladder will naturally begin to accumulate leadership responsibility and a more proactive role in the workplace, so that if and when the promotion comes, the official title and its responsibilities aren't a sudden leap.

Of course, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Shit happens that turns your world upside down, and an important part of life's lessons is figuring out how to fix things and get something out of it. As human nature tends towards complacency, we try to avoid obstacles when possible, so the ideal life as defined by your average joe tends to prioritize stability.

Conscription is fascinating to experience in that you're temporarily becoming part of something that has its own institutional momentum largely separate from "normal" society. At a certain level, who you were before is irrelevant - you're inevitably a fish out of water compared to those who have been progressing within the system for years, something particularly pronounced in the Special Forces community.

There were roughly 1000 men altogether in my batch of recruits, out of which the Army Special Forces received 15 volunteers. For the most part, those of us dumb enough to voluntarily jump out of perfectly fine airplanes tended to be in better shape than the average recruit. Physically speaking, basic training is fairly easy in Taiwan, so we mostly got through without the typical newbie hazing directed at the particularly unmotivated.

After completing 37 days of Basic, we were shipped to Jump School, joining another 30 or so soldiers from other branches of service to form the first jump class of 2018. For context, literally everyone who wants to join the Army Special Forces - whether as infantry, cook, driver, or satellite tech - goes to Jump School, as it's a prerequisite for our Command. In other words, we're pretty much guaranteed an opportunity to train and qualify (unless disqualified for physical reasons), whereas soldiers from other branches of service or Commands tend to be carefully selected, because in Taiwan's cash-strapped military, the brass is generally loathe to waste resources on people who haven't made the military their calling and are in it for the duration. Which is to say that the Marines and Frogmen we trained with in Jump School were already well-qualified soldiers in their own domains, and while we may have been training together at that point in time, there was simply no comparison possible. No hazing was required to knock us down a peg. Just looking around the barracks and seeing the few people that the Taiwanese military could actually brag about did the trick. I didn't feel like I'd "made it" - rather, I felt pretty insecure.

In other words, I'd gone from the the best of the bunch in basic training (admittedly, a *very* low bar) to the bottom of the food chain. Going from my backwater high school of 60 kids to the University of Michigan (student population: 44,000) was a similar experience. Of course, this is a good thing, because you can improve so much faster when surrounded by people who know their shit.

From reading memoirs of astronauts (a particularly interesting group of people), I've found that this is a common feeling in the space program, and the sensation is amplified because standards are so ridiculously high just to be considered for preliminary astronaut training. Possessing multiple PhDs and bodies in peak physical condition isn't special - it's just the prerequisite. That's who you're competing with, and it can be quite a cultural shock. To quote from Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who served as Commander of the International Space Station:

"If you've always been successful, though, it's hard not to fret when you're being surpassed. The astronauts who seem to have the hardest time with it are, interestingly enough, often the ones who are most naturally talented. Just as some people can pick up a golf club for the first time and play incredibly well, some astronauts are simply more gifted than the rest of us. 

Early success is a terrible teacher. You're essentially being rewarded for a lack of preparation, so when you find yourself in a situation where you must prepare, you can't do it. You don't know how. 

Even the most gifted person in the world will, at some point during astronaut training, cross a threshold where it's no longer possible to wing it. The volume of complex information and skills to be mastered is simply too great to be able to figure it all out on the fly. Some get to this break point and realize they can't continue to rely on raw talent - they need to buckle down and study. Others never quite seem to figure it out, and in true tortoise-and-hare fashion, find themselves in a place they never expected to be: the back of the pack. They don't know how to push themselves to the point of discomfort and beyond. Typically, they also don't recognize their own weaknesses and are therefore reluctant to accept responsibility when things don't turn out well."

After a month at Jump School and 5 qualifying jumps certifying us as official paratroopers, we then moved on to the Special Forces mountain training center - Ranger School. It was yet another shift. At Jump School, we were outclassed by the regulars, but at the same time we were still all going through the same program and learning things fresh and earning something most of the military would never achieve. Here, literally *everyone* had jump wings - it meant jack shit. This kind of thing doesn't happen very much in "real life", certainly not every few months. In that regard, I got to experience something I probably wouldn't have otherwise.

So all in all, the military experience was in some ways a tourist experience. The souvenirs were a nice touch, but the real value in traveling comes from seeing the world a different way.