Truth, Duty, Valour
Earlier I mentioned a second "major failure" of mine. I figured I might as well beat the iron while it is hot and tell you today.
As pretentious as this may sound, success is a way of life for me. Everything I've tried to learn has always been easy. I have always gotten every job I've applied for. Most people send dozens of applications at a time. Me, I'd take my time to select the one I wanted and mailed one application. Then I waited for the call. The scholarship interview was the first time that I did not get what I wanted. The second time was my application to military college.
I remember walking into the office downtown and asking for the application forms. Everything was so bland. Dirty beige walls decorated with cheap laminated posters depicting overly cheerful recruits. Faded threadbare flags of Quebec and Canada on wobbly stands. Ugly commercial chairs that were all over auto repair shops in the 80's. Precariously piled 5 year old magazines with the corners rolled up. Plastic plants covered with a layer of dust in which someone had spelled "hi" with a fingertip. As I took it all in, my eyes focused on a middle-aged officer who stood behind a desk, idly twirling a pen, and I wondered if he was the conductor of this eclectic symphony of boredom.
He handed me the papers and a pile of video tapes. Pointing to a little curtained alcove, he told me to go watch some of these videos to "get a feel for what I liked." Half expecting to find a bottle of lubricant and a box of tissues, I gingerly sat down upon the ugly garage chair and popped in a random tape. They were all mini-documentaries on the different jobs available and the degrees required to get them. I rifled through the tapes and fast-forwarded through most of the ones I actually played.
When I came out, my blasé conductor scheduled me for an IQ test (well, they called it a general knowledge test at the time but it turned out to be a standard IQ test) and a medical. He told me to fill out the forms and to answer honestly, for "lying would not be doing myself a great service." I supplied the requested report cards and answered the questions truthfully, save for one.
The question was: How many hours a week do you spend on homework? The truth was that I didn't do homework. I only did the mandatory papers that must be turned in, the lab reports, the book reports and similar tasks. Everything else I didn't do because I didn't find it hard or challenging. For this reason, I didn't always get to see the hardest exercises that would have prepared me for the tests. I usually scored in the 80's though, which was pretty high for the private school I was attending. I didn't want to answer "less than two hours a week." That sounded bad. It sounded lazy. I tried to remember how much time our teachers said we should be spending studying at home. I came up with the nice round number 15. 2 hours a night + 5 hours on the weekend. It seemed like a reasonable, respectable amount. I wrote 15.
I passed on the IQ test and the medical. I was given an interview. I must say I was surprised by some of the questions the officer asked me. First of all he quizzed me on the stupid videos to see if I had really watched them. I guess I wasn't the first one to have been bored to tears by them. If the candidate had all the answers, I imagine that it showed that he had the masochistic disposition to become a soldier. Then he asked me some questions on current world events and general world geography. After that we fell into more conventional territory with questions about my personality and past achievements. The whole process lasted over an hour.
When it was over, he explained to me that he was not the person making the final decision. He would send my file, along with his interview notes to Ottawa where a committee would determine whether or not I got in. "You're a good candidate," he said, smiling. "Only one thing really concerns me. You say that you study 15 hours a week. I see that you have a general average of 83%. At the military college, the pass mark is 75% and experience has shown us that for a student to keep the same average, he'll need to put in twice as many hours. In your case that means 30 hours a week and you simply will not have that much time. This leads me to believe that you would struggle to pass your classes."
I sat very still as my brain processed and reprocessed the words in slow-motion. A faint echo of the symphony conductor's warning on lies came back to haunt me. What to do? Say that I had lied on that question? No good would come of that. Images of Wile E. Coyote burned, crushed and mutilated as a result of his own alleged cleverness flashed in my head. I laughed out loud. Noticing the disapproving frown of my interviewer, I converted the laugh into a cough and rose, extending a hand. "Thank you for your time, sir." As I exited the office, my eyes glimpsed the coat of arms of the military college hanging on the wall. Its motto read: "Truth, Duty, Valour."
About a month later I received a letter from the Department of National Defense: application denied. I saved the letter with my souvenirs as a reminder of the life lesson that lying is indeed very bad.
As pretentious as this may sound, success is a way of life for me. Everything I've tried to learn has always been easy. I have always gotten every job I've applied for. Most people send dozens of applications at a time. Me, I'd take my time to select the one I wanted and mailed one application. Then I waited for the call. The scholarship interview was the first time that I did not get what I wanted. The second time was my application to military college.
I remember walking into the office downtown and asking for the application forms. Everything was so bland. Dirty beige walls decorated with cheap laminated posters depicting overly cheerful recruits. Faded threadbare flags of Quebec and Canada on wobbly stands. Ugly commercial chairs that were all over auto repair shops in the 80's. Precariously piled 5 year old magazines with the corners rolled up. Plastic plants covered with a layer of dust in which someone had spelled "hi" with a fingertip. As I took it all in, my eyes focused on a middle-aged officer who stood behind a desk, idly twirling a pen, and I wondered if he was the conductor of this eclectic symphony of boredom.
He handed me the papers and a pile of video tapes. Pointing to a little curtained alcove, he told me to go watch some of these videos to "get a feel for what I liked." Half expecting to find a bottle of lubricant and a box of tissues, I gingerly sat down upon the ugly garage chair and popped in a random tape. They were all mini-documentaries on the different jobs available and the degrees required to get them. I rifled through the tapes and fast-forwarded through most of the ones I actually played.
When I came out, my blasé conductor scheduled me for an IQ test (well, they called it a general knowledge test at the time but it turned out to be a standard IQ test) and a medical. He told me to fill out the forms and to answer honestly, for "lying would not be doing myself a great service." I supplied the requested report cards and answered the questions truthfully, save for one.
The question was: How many hours a week do you spend on homework? The truth was that I didn't do homework. I only did the mandatory papers that must be turned in, the lab reports, the book reports and similar tasks. Everything else I didn't do because I didn't find it hard or challenging. For this reason, I didn't always get to see the hardest exercises that would have prepared me for the tests. I usually scored in the 80's though, which was pretty high for the private school I was attending. I didn't want to answer "less than two hours a week." That sounded bad. It sounded lazy. I tried to remember how much time our teachers said we should be spending studying at home. I came up with the nice round number 15. 2 hours a night + 5 hours on the weekend. It seemed like a reasonable, respectable amount. I wrote 15.
I passed on the IQ test and the medical. I was given an interview. I must say I was surprised by some of the questions the officer asked me. First of all he quizzed me on the stupid videos to see if I had really watched them. I guess I wasn't the first one to have been bored to tears by them. If the candidate had all the answers, I imagine that it showed that he had the masochistic disposition to become a soldier. Then he asked me some questions on current world events and general world geography. After that we fell into more conventional territory with questions about my personality and past achievements. The whole process lasted over an hour.
When it was over, he explained to me that he was not the person making the final decision. He would send my file, along with his interview notes to Ottawa where a committee would determine whether or not I got in. "You're a good candidate," he said, smiling. "Only one thing really concerns me. You say that you study 15 hours a week. I see that you have a general average of 83%. At the military college, the pass mark is 75% and experience has shown us that for a student to keep the same average, he'll need to put in twice as many hours. In your case that means 30 hours a week and you simply will not have that much time. This leads me to believe that you would struggle to pass your classes."
I sat very still as my brain processed and reprocessed the words in slow-motion. A faint echo of the symphony conductor's warning on lies came back to haunt me. What to do? Say that I had lied on that question? No good would come of that. Images of Wile E. Coyote burned, crushed and mutilated as a result of his own alleged cleverness flashed in my head. I laughed out loud. Noticing the disapproving frown of my interviewer, I converted the laugh into a cough and rose, extending a hand. "Thank you for your time, sir." As I exited the office, my eyes glimpsed the coat of arms of the military college hanging on the wall. Its motto read: "Truth, Duty, Valour."
About a month later I received a letter from the Department of National Defense: application denied. I saved the letter with my souvenirs as a reminder of the life lesson that lying is indeed very bad.
posted by Nathalie at 5:57 PM
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