That was the summary of my evaluation at the end of 6th term, “Smart but not ambitious. Lazy.”
It doesn’t sound too nice. But I couldn’t disagree, the squadron officers had captured me very precisely. I kind of liked it, bizzarely…
I wasn’t lazy in one sense – when I joined, my physical fitness was abysmal. But I worked enough on it to become “normal”, which to me was a big deal. By the end of the 3rd semester, I had achieved my goal of being at least normal across all categories.
In fact, I was so gung-ho on becoming normal, that once when I got sequestered along with him for 3 days due to some flu going around, my first term DCC was bitterly complaining “Why won’t you let me sham?” because I wasn’t going to waste that time, and I was obviously expecting him to make me do PT all the time. He really was very angry at my enthusiasm for being given “ragda”, and hated me. The hatred was specially worse, because he wasn’t very good at academics. He wasn’t very good at his sport, boxing, either, and took out all his frustrations once by making me stand at attention and practicing all his boxing on me, without gloves of course. (The upper-cuts in the solar plexus were the worst, though he was careful not to hit me on the face as some officer would notice for sure.) I was very proud of it later, because I managed to stand at attention through all of it.
So I wasn’t lazy in that sense, of working on my PT etc. I used to be practically dead by the time I got back to the squadron from my practice sessions.
But once I got through all the PT normally, and passed drill square, and was normal in everything else, I was pretty much in paradise. I really, totally, enjoyed the academy life. For at least three full semesters, I was having a really good time.
Would I have liked to be a serious academy appointment or something, ACA, ACC, BCC, BCA type stuff? Nobody asked me. It was my drill or my PT or my attitude, or something. Perhaps my drill wasn’t very good, or my rope climbing form wasn’t too good, or my bayonet charge wasn’t good enough, or I swam too slow, who knows what…
But if somebody had asked, and if it was a totally free choice, I would have said “no”! The serious appointments, all of them, basically seemed like a lot of work to me. You had to make sure you had nice clothes every day, and you had to waste a lot of your free time reporting to some officer, and taking care of juniors’ handkerchiefs and other important stuff. You possibly also had to stand around counting the juniors, and finding out who had what attend-C or whatever, and report that to the officers.
I really liked the daily life and specially valued my free time, and if given a real choice, would not have wanted to lose any of the relaxation time after lunch, or any other sleep or free time.
Officers were good, and they kind of knew what the cadets were like. In my case, if they had tried to figure out my psychology, they would have known that I absolutely would not have wanted any appointment, even if I were considered qualified.
Becoming known throughout the academy was not a motivation for me at all. Since our first term I was somehow very well known already, and I had a high level of academy-wide exposure all through my stay at the academy. So any appointment wouldn’t have helped in that respect, it would only have been a burden.
The absolutely only thing I would have liked about those appointments, was the chance to shout loudly at the top of your voice during drill, that looked like fun 🙂
So the “lazy” and “not ambitious” was very apt. That’s just what the academy made me, thanks academy. That’s sincere, not sarcastic at all – I really do like the lazy and unambitious life, and it’s been totally amazing how much you can get done being lazy and not-ambitious.