Compulsory Service
Table of Contents
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| Iranian army manoeuvring near Tehran - 1935 |
Introduction
After my degree, I had the time to spend two years in the military. I decided to use my option to spend my time as an employee (instead of a soldier at a base). I’ll try to skip the nitty gritty details…
After finishing my M.S. I started the first month of work (actually, right after! exactly two days after. This is crucial since where I lived, studied, and worked were all different cities.). Based on what we had agreed on, I had to spend one month of trial employment. after that six months more employment (for the sake of bureaucracy, and since I had no “privileges”), getting enlisted, two months of military training, then finally starting the two years… there’s a lot of paperwork in the process and the company can (quite literally) throw me away at any point without even a reason. I was required to write them a cheque as a “token of good faith” (which is very common, apparently) but there’s no guarantee from their side.
After I started the job, I realized everything I did before was basically a joke. there are elements to an actual workplace that’s not even comparable to those of a home office (I’m being bold by calling my bedroom desk an office):
speed
Everything moves fast in the office. people talk fast, computers are faster, I type, think, write and learn faster, as if I’m in a whole other dimension. this is also true for life outside of work. moving to a larger city does have that effect I think. cars go faster, people consume more, I fall asleep faster, you get the idea. there’s simply “more” of everything.
Some of these are the result of compulsion: I have to present myself as the young talented enthusiast (which isn’t 100% untrue to be fair) so I need to run the extra mile. I have to sleep sooner because if I don’t, I’ll be yawning for hours not forgetting my chain of thoughts every 3 minutes.
interactions
I moved from a city with 40,000 people, to one with 16,000,000. that’s a 400x leap. I’m not saying that my interactions have multiplied by 400x, but there’s been a huge difference. sympathy is rare and even one remote acquaintance is a diamond in the rough. I try to stay positive, helpful and chin up during the day, not only to brighten my own day but to attempt to possibly do so for someone else too.
To wrap up, one talks more often as well, naturally. there are more people to talk too, and more occasions that need talking in one way or another.
consumption
One is basically condemned to fanatically consume in order to survive, and/or blend in.