🇸🇬 Once In Our Lifetime, Two Years Of Our Life

Some people would usually ask this, if you were given a choice, would you serve two years of NS (Nation Service) willingly? To be honest, if there are no repercussions in not serving NS (not being able to find a government job easily, loose citizenship, get charged etc), many people would do it, including me. Many people have different reasons of not wanting to serve, some feel that they wont be able to withstand the physical challenge, some feel that they wont fit in socially well, some just want to use this two years of their life to study or work instead and some simply find these two years is a total waste of their time. To most Singaporeans males, NS give females a 2 years head start in life because females do not need to serve NS.

 However, despite all these negative general opinions, I did not find my 2 years in NS a total waste of time. In fact, I did appreciate these two year of NS as it gives me time to do my other stuffs. In school, we are tied to rigid schedules and strict timetables. Every single second is important as it could be used in studies which eventually will most likely determine whether you can attain your dream job. Even in weekends, if we had nothing to do and exams are coming, we still have to mug like crazy if we want to score results with flying colours. However in NS, during our admin time and when we bookout, we do not  have to study or do projects, we can just literally slack and do nothing and enjoy every single moment of life without having to worry about anything. We can just play computer games, watch online movies and shows, go out with friends etc without having this fear of losing out to others academically in this paper chase race. We have literally nothing to worry about during our free times. These two years was a well-deserved break from the rigours of studying. I get to do many things during my free time, like reading countless books, learning guitar, watching lots of movies/tv series, catching up with old friends, reading up about my uni modules, spending more time with my family, being able to go church regularly etc.

In addition, I also learned a lot of skills and life long lessons in NS. Being exposed to people from different backgrounds had greatly opened my eyes to different situations that people are going through and also widened my perspective in life. Through interacting with different people, I get to learn different lessons from them. I admit, it was hard adapting and fitting it at first physically, mentally and socially, but after a while things got better after BMT (Basic Military Training). Life was definitely not a bed of roses in my army life, I had been through rough seasons and harsh encounters with unreasonable superiors and other people. Still, I learned a few lessons from these experiences. I learned how to be tolerant with some people and learn to respect people of higher authority and how to deal with unreasonable people. Sometimes, life is unfair. I had learned on how to accept certain unfair things and deal with it during my army life. I also learned how to trust God when I was in deep waters, because in the end He never failed me through any situations during my 2 years in NS. On the other side of the coin, the hard skills that I learned in NS was also very useful. Being a mechanic in NS impart me with technical skills that I would need to have in my future course in University (Engineering) and give me a taste how it would be like to be an Engineer.

This is personal to me due to the favourable situations, but I thank God for giving me a general stay out life and my camp which is near my house. I remembered before getting my unit posting, I kept praying to God to let me be posted to Kranji Camp forever after my vocational training which was also at Kranji Camp. Things got ugly during the posting session and somehow the clerks blundered, but whatever that happened or meant to be happened, I thank God by His grace that when I was in two different unit, my location was always at Kranji Camp. This saves a lot of my transport fees as I do not have to take the public bus or train when I book in or book out. Also, because my camp was near my house, I could wake up later than my other friends in the morning and reach home earlier too after work. Even though the work environment was quite cancerous and there were frequent OTS and several outfield, the location of the camp being near my house really made up for all of that. Having a workplace that is walk-able from my house is already such a great blessing from God. Eeven though the environment in my unit was cancerous, I learned a lot of life lessons from it and made quite good friends from it which made up for the cancer.

These two years in my life is really a unique and an enjoyable experience for me. If given a chance to serve NS out of freewill, I might not choose to serve it but I definitely do not find these two years a total waste of my time. In fact, I am thankful for this season in my life as it taught me a lot of life-long lessons and values, allowed me to take a break from studying, letting me relaxed and doing the things I wanted to do during my free time. Once in our lifetime, two years of our time. If you are about to enter NS or going through it right now, make this two years of your time enjoyable, make more friends and make full use of the time you get away from studying/work so that you would not find NS a total waste of your time.