Greece’s (mandatory) military service is usually an eye-opening experience among those who go through it. In order to prepare mentally for my enrollment, I asked around for particular experiences. With regards to the training, friends who did their service earlier gave me the impression that it will be a boring experience - mostly just doing the bare minimum typically required - as was often the case for privates.
To my surprise, my recruit training center did a remarkable job with training. It was both physical and theoretical, on a daily basis, following the defence minister’s “new agenda” for the greek army to the letter. It was an interesting experience, but admittedly there was no time nor energy for studying.
At the end of the training, everyone is getting assigned a specialty depending either on random chance or prior experience. Being a musician, I was transferred to the military band in early June, and now I have the time and the energy to deal with interesting happenings in the math world :)
