Quote:
Originally posted by 33girl
You're saying people who have been in combat. She's saying people who have been in the military in general. There's a difference.
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Ehh, most of the people I know who have been in the military have also been in combat, so I guess I wasn't making a huge distinction.
I guess it depends on how you define maturity. If you define it as being able to accept orders, shut up when you disagree with someone in authority, work hard, stop whining, etc. -- then sure, people in the military are generally more mature than the population at large. But when it comes to making rational, well-thought-out personal decisions, or balancing their short-term wants against long-term needs, or relating to people who aren't carrying guns (heh -- kidding, sort of), or evaluating risky behaviors, or many things beyond what I've mentioned -- they often fall short of their non-military counterparts. Let's face it -- the military doesn't prepare you for "the real world." That's not their job. Their job is to prepare you for war. And sometimes the skills for the real world and the skills for war can be the same -- discipline, for example -- but just as often, they contradict each other. Most of the people I knew who served in the military were pretty mature in terms of their professional/academic lives, but when it came to their emotional/personal lives and thought processes, there were some developmental issues. Nothing about the army would stop them from, say, thinking it was a good idea to drink a handle of vodka and falling out a window. They would probably be better than I am at sitting down and forcing themselves to write a paper, though . . . haha.
I've had a couple conversations with one of the guys that I'm closest to, and it struck me how many drugs he and the guys in his unit (is that what it's called? I don't know military terminology) were putting into their systems at some points in Iraq just to cope with the reality of the situation they were in. Maybe they were the exception and not the rule, but I find it hard to believe that it's THAT rare. This same boy has displayed some definite PTSD symptoms from being in Iraq and, now that he's out of the military and into college, uses drugs and alcohol to self-medicate more than anyone else I know. He may not be the rule, but I've seen this pattern repeated enough times with other military friends and acquaintances to know that they aren't the exception, either.
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