The Most Important Turning Point in My Life

For me, the worst experience until now is being a fledgling solider, but it is also the most important turning point in my life. While recalling the period of my absurd youth life before joining the army, being a junior five-year college student, I really think I idled away most of my past time and screwed up everything. In those days, I hung out with my friends for doing all stupid, pointless and time-wasting activities all the time. I almost never thought about the objectives of my life, let alone doing some preparations for my next step in future. After graduating from the college, I tried to attend the transfer examination; undoubtedly, I failed that and had no other alternatives but to join the army for serving the obligation to my country. To be honest, I was not ready for doing my mandatory military service then, but my father told me, “Don’t worry about it. Joining army will make you mature and be a man! ”

      In the beginning of my army days, all my feeling was nervous, anxious or irritable all the day. There was a well-known convention in the army – a fledgling soldier had better obey older soldier’s unreasonable and unfair request; in other words, the fledgling soldier should do anything particularly harsh, dirty and troublesome which older soldiers would never want to do. Therefore, when I was a fledgling soldier, the first thing I needed to do as I got up in the morning everyday was to clean the lavatory, which always filled with a stinky odor and which made me feel like vomiting. During the day, I had a lot of work to do because I not only needed to accomplish the officer’s instructions but also shared older soldiers’ responsibility. Some of them never treated me well or appreciated me but always humiliated and blamed me. Besides, when something needed be done occasionally, I always had to pretend that I would like to take it over voluntarily, or older soldiers would force me to do that and after that they would give me more troubles before bed time. The most unfortunate is that there was no other fledgling soldier but me for half a year!

      During that period, all those awful bad things on me not only really made me feel frustrated, self-abased and painful, but also made me think of something every night – something about my future. Not until those days did I realized how horrible my ridiculous life was in the past. From that moment on, I made a decision and kept it in mind– I don’t want to be a useless person anymore! After finishing my army days, I attended a cram school and studied really hard every day and night. Finally, I passed the transfer examination and got admission to NXXU.Although I was a little bit older to enroll in the university, I changed my life.

      For me, being a fledgling soldier is the worst experience until now, but also certainly the most important turning point in my life. Even though most of my friends consider that doing the mandatory military service is a time wasting nightmare, I think that instead of wasting my time I really learned how to seize the day and prevent time from fleeing. Nowadays I am not totally in the dark anymore when I think of my future, and I manage my time better for getting things done. That is just like I made a nightmare, but after waking up I have got a new life!