I enlisted on July 4, 2023 and came out of the SAF on May 5, 2025 having commissioned and led men as a cyber defence platoon commander.
That arc sounds neat when written in one sentence. Living it did not feel neat at all. It felt like four very different stages: reporting in as a GovTech engineer who mostly knew keyboards, getting dragged through a BMT I hated more than expected, landing in OCS when I thought DIS made more sense, and finally crossing into a role where other people were attached to my decisions.
The four stages of the journey
1. Enlisting on July 4, 2023
The first shock was not army theory. It was the immediate contrast between my old life and reporting in as a recruit. Even passing IPPT and getting the two-month exemption already felt improbable to me, which made the transition even stranger.
2. BMT hurt more than I expected
BMT is where the bad food, homesickness, and sheer length of the term really hit me. It is also where Nicholas became the buddy who made that stretch more survivable, and where I discovered that the SIT test was weirdly my thing.
3. I did not expect to get into OCS
I aimed for the best, but I still thought DIS made more intuitive sense for me than OCS. Getting selected, then immediately calling a captain “sergeant” on day one, was a good summary of how achievement and unreadiness arrived together.
4. After commissioning, there was no turning back
The last stage started when commissioning stopped the whole story from being just about my own endurance. Now I had to lead men as a cyber defence platoon commander, and the question became whether I could carry responsibility in a way other people could trust.
The full story lives in the four linked chapters above. The sequence matters, but each stage has its own distinct turn.