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Book.1 EP. 02 : 000: Notes on Becoming Human

 While organizing the artifacts of my life...


Looking back, like most people, my 20s were a whirlwind of confusion.

I entered the military academy almost by accident—tagging along with a friend—and spent the next four years constantly questioning whether that path was ever meant for me. After graduating, I endured six more years filled with unpredictable people, situations, and relentless efforts to prove myself. Maybe, as someone once said, the choices I made weren’t meant to bear fruit until I reached my 40s or 50s. Maybe they were seeds—still green, still growing.

Now, in my mid-30s, I’ve begun to reflect on my life.
What shaped me? Why did I become the person I am today?

To understand myself, I need to revisit my past. To prepare for the future, I need to examine the present. But to make sense of the present, I must trace the path I’ve walked. I never felt easy defining myself in neat terms, so I decided to revisit the fragments of writing I left behind over the past decade.

That’s how I ended up opening a long-forgotten box—one filled with old dog tags, nameplates, and scattered USBs and SD cards.

Among dozens of folders, I found one particular file—a piece of writing from years ago, written at a turning point in my life. I’d like to share that here, as part of this personal inquiry I’m calling “000, A Study in Being Human.”

My Life, My Alma Mater

Looking back, my academy days were far from smooth. I never really thrived there. My grades were poor, I struggled with strict routines, and I constantly bristled against the rules. My face rarely smiled. I was once even summoned to the disciplinary committee. I remember sitting at the corner of the U-shaped table, admitting my faults and promising to improve. I’m sure the faculty didn’t think highly of me. In many ways, I was a difficult cadet.

Now, time has flown. I’m a captain in my sixth year of service, nearing discharge. Recently, while covering for a senior officer, I guided a group of cadets through their OR rotations. Standing before them, delivering a lecture on anesthesia, I found myself staring into their weary yet hopeful eyes. I felt strangely moved.

After the lecture, I opened the floor to questions. No one had asked me to.
Their curiosity burst forth—about military life, career paths, training, even post-discharge choices. I answered as sincerely as I could, feeling for the first time that I might be a real mentor.

It was surreal. Me—the once-rebellious cadet—now offering life advice in uniform.

The reality, though, is that life after graduation wasn’t simple. Leaving the academy wasn’t a liberation; it was another battlefield. I had to navigate a medical system filled with seasoned doctors, hardened officers, and rigid hierarchy. As a brand-new lieutenant, I was terrified—sometimes too scared to even make a phone call. I memorized every reporting format just to avoid being yelled at by senior surgeons. And yet, I was yelled at anyway—often, and with no clear reason.

Ironically, what helped me survive that chaos… was the academy itself.
The very place I resented had made me resilient. I am grateful for it now—for the training, the pressure, the drills, the hardship. It forged me into someone who could weather the storm of real life.

As my discharge nears, I find myself reflecting deeply. I think about what I did with my time. I regret not studying harder, not getting closer to my peers, not appreciating moments of joy when I had them. Cadet life felt endless back then—so rigid, so confined. But that structure made me who I am. Because of that, I can now face the emotional rollercoaster of working in hospitals, commanding others, and managing my own life with a steadier hand.

The military medical field is changing fast. New trauma centers, civilian-military collaborations—there’s a lot to navigate. I hope that junior officers will continue dreaming, continue striving, and never lose hope. Just like I found meaning in my messy journey, I hope they, too, will cherish their time and their alma mater.

And I hope they’ll remember:
Even if it didn’t feel like it at the time… we were becoming something more than soldiers.
We were becoming human.

November 30, 2019 – 8:35 PM

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