After high school you have to choose your university. Some of you may think about military academy. Because ‘military academy’ have a lot of attractive points. But it’s crossroad of your life that remain civilian or become soldier. So I want you to know about cadet’s life more exactly. Not just nice, showy or hard etc.
<Good Points >
Before saying good points watch this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5Rlch3zrBE
Whenever I watch this video, I want to enter Military academy. (even I gave up Korea military academy) I want to say 3 good points.
1) Guaranteed employment.
If you graduate military academy, you can be commissioned as a second lieutenant. And most of you can be promoted to lieutenant colonel (based on Korea military academy). So you don’t have to worry about your future employment.
2) Economic affluence
Military academy support all you need. School expenses, laptop computer, cloth, dormitory, food and even pocket money. You don’t have to spend you own money at all. It’s very large benefit.
3) Physically fit In KMA, you have to exercise every day. It’s not compulsion to exercise every day. But you do that voluntarily for following standards of school physical strength. So you can always be physically fit. Cadets eat a lot of food a day. But they are not fat. Every day exercise makes it possible.
<Bad points>
1) Restricted employment selection
After graduate military academy, you have to be a soldier at least 5 years. There are many roles in army. There are military police, professor, administrative job and pilot etc. But all of these roles are basically in the military.
2) Restricted freedom
There is no freedom to soldier. It’s same with cadet. They can go out only weekend. Even weekend, sometimes they can’t go out without permission. They must get up at 6 am every day and they must live tightly scheduled life. And there are a lot of things that they can’t do. For example, they should not take a phone call during walking. And they should not take off their cap outside.
Opinion
Being a military officer is not easy. I think that entering military academy is not hard but graduating military academy is very hard. There are many cadets who give up the school. It says that “graduating military academy is hard”
I was a cadet. But I gave up the school because of strength and career. Soldier is not a comfortable job. For example, Soldier must march every year. Watch this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqpwOiev9aQ)
I want to say to you that “Don’t be a cadet just because of economic affluence or guaranteed employment.” These are very small thing in your whole life. And I don’t recommend to become a cadet because of 3 reasons.
1) Most of you don’t know what you want to do in future. Ordinary undergraduate students can do anything they want. Regardless of their school, they can challenge everything. But cadet, they can be a soldier only.
2) If you become a cadet, you will envy your undergraduate friend whole your cadet’s life. I always want to become a ordinary undergraduate student. I want to study in cafe, do daily hof and become a CC. you can think that cadet’s life is special. But for cadets, their life is not special, just unusual.
3) Freedom is more important than economic affluence. In KMA, I realized why people fought for freedom. Freedom is natural human right. So don’t abandon your freedom because of economic affluence. You can make more money after 6~8 years.
If you want more information, visit http://enter.kma.ac.kr/
