I Quit Teaching to Find My True Self in the Army
How the army helped me find a purpose beyond the classroom
Life has been a rollercoaster, and I had to make some hard calls at touch-and-go moments. In hindsight, looking at the career decisions I’ve made along the way, I came to believe reality indeed trumps fiction.
I was born into a long line of ancestral traditions that pushed the male family members to go into the priesthood or become doctors. My father was the firstborn baby boy, and he was destined to embrace the cloth. Fortunately, Dad fled the seminary just in time to meet my mother. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here today to tell you my story.
I, too, was the firstborn of my generation. Consequently, I should have followed in the footsteps of my predecessors to uphold the family tradition, but fate had different plans.
While I was growing up, my godparents were role models. When I understood the concept of work and how adults had jobs, I wished to be like them and become a doctor.
From the remnants of childhood memories, I recall how my godfather seemed like a guardian angel tending to the sick. He would come to my house when I was lying on my bed, burning up in fever, had some nasty gash or head wound, or even that time I drove a box nail through my right foot while running across our vineyards.
I admired my godfather's mysterious power to heal the sick. It never crossed my mind to become a police officer, a firefighter, or an astronaut. I wanted to be like him and care for all the sick children.
Thus, I waived the seminary and happily started school. From that moment on, in my childish dreams, I was a step closer to becoming a doctor.
My mother often tells me how I cried and threw tantrums when I was sick and could not go to school.
When it came time to choose a major, I decided on biology and biomedical sciences but fate had other plans.
Back in the nineties, there was no psycho-educational advice before choosing a major. We followed our hearts.
Life could have taken a different turn. I had to find out the hard way that my brain was hard-wired for emotional intelligence rather than exact sciences.
So, at the end of the 11th grade, the class principal called me to her office for a talk that should have taken place two years earlier.
I wasn’t doing great in math. Top-notch grades were instrumental in the selection process for medical studies; thus, my chances of getting in were null.
The dream was collapsing before my eyes, but I revamped my life to become the man I am today.
You can have a dream job, but you can’t let the dream cloud your judgment.
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
Three months later, I changed schools, changed my major, made new friends, and accepted my true self.
I reconnected with my essence, returning to the long hours spent reading in my grandparents’ living room.
I had finally embraced the inner voice that made me fall in love with Dumas, Jules Verne, and Walter Scott. Books have been my passion since the moment I put together enough letters to read my first paragraph.
That was my metamorphosis, and out of the cocoon came a butterfly free to spread its wings and fly away to fulfill a higher purpose.
A year later, I ran into the school principal, who shattered my childhood dream. We were at a ceremony at the town hall. She was sitting in the audience. I was up on the stage shaking the mayor’s hand after receiving the award given to the best student in my school.
Two years later, I entered the Faculty of Arts at the University of Porto in the Modern Languages and Literature course.
Life turned 180 degrees, and for five years, I pursued arts and humanities, envisioning a career as a language teacher. I became a ballpoint pen connoisseur.
My exam sheets were fertile ground for expressing my thoughts, and the first four years flew by in an instant.
In my fifth year, I had my first experience in the field during my teaching internship.
The university assigned me to an establishment only a few hundred meters away from the school that saw me fail my dream when I was still a teenager.
I started my first year on the job, and I still have fond memories of my first class of sixteen pupils with special educational needs.
They were there only to fulfill mandatory schooling, yet they were kindhearted and the best class I could have ever wished for during my internship. I learned much more from my pupils than they learned from my classes.
That was the biggest challenge for a trainee teacher, and those kids taught me more in a year than any pedagogy expert.
Once the internship ended, the desert crossing began for a young teacher with only 365 days of service on his resume.
Unfortunately, I didn’t make it through the national competition for teachers. I ended up filling in for the occasional absence of a colleague.
From ballpoint to full metal jacket
Life was hard in the early 2000s, and I needed to work full-time.
Back then, my gift with foreign languages provided me with my first experience working abroad. I embraced the six-month job in Geneva, a city where cultures from all four parts of the world intersect.
When I came back to Portugal, I applied to the teacher’s competition once more, but I didn’t get in, and I found myself unemployed once again. So, I had to embrace new projects without closing the door to any opportunities that came my way.
One day, I came across a different sort of competition—a call for Army officers. During my college years, I had always postponed compulsory military service, but what the heck, I gave it a go.
Military service was no longer obligatory in Portugal, and there was a lack of human resources in the ranks.
I sent in my application, and one day I received a call. On the other end, a voice told me that my letter had arrived after the officers’ competition deadline.
The army had launched a competition for sergeants, with the condition that only graduates could apply. The phone call served as an invitation.
Without knowing what I was getting myself into, I accepted the invite and applied for that competition. The candidates had to be less than 27 years old by May. I was 26 at the time and had my birthday in August.
The army accepted my application. They scheduled the physical, medical, and army aptitude psychometric testing. If the latter did not scare me, the former was a challenge for someone who had neglected physical prowess in favor of intellectual skill.
I had always had average grades in physical education, and I had not done sports for the last ten years. A race against time was on, and it was time to put aside my ballpoint pen and go for the full metal jacket.
I cleared all the screening tests, and in May, I entered the Army Sergeants’ School to fulfill the first stage of my military training.
Bootcamp
From university to boot camp, it may seem like a personal and professional setback. Still, for me, it turned out to be an adamant character-building experience that forged the man and professional I am today.
Nothing in my past has tested my limits to that extent. During those months of military training, I created bonds of companionship. I also realized the importance of solidarity and camaraderie in team-building.
We are only as strong as the person next to us, and if they break, the line breaks too. Hence, the chain is as strong as its weakest link.
From boot camp, I went to the Army Services College in Póvoa do Varzim. I was only 20 miles from home and a wingbeat away from the Atlantic Ocean.
The ultimate destination was uncertain, and none of us knew where they would assign us; it could be somewhere on the mainland or the islands.
In October, the marching orders arrived. I was on my way to the
First deployments
I would serve my country on the noblest army mission—planning and deploying peace operations. For seven years, I served as a specialist in peacekeeping operations.
This was 2006; the Second Iraq War had started only a few years ago on March 19, 2003, and would go on for a painfully long eight years.
Portugal had been deploying peacekeeping forces since 1993 when it supported ONUMOZ in Mozambique.
In Angola, we had a group of military observers that started with UNAVEM III and ended with MONUA.
Meanwhile, the Portuguese Army had joined EUFOR Operation Althea in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2004.
Here in Europe, we were engaged in Kosovo, where we had a light armor battalion attached to KFOR.
Starting in 2002, Portugal deployed many units to Afghanistan, including a Quick Reaction Force (QRF ISAF) composed of commandos and paratroopers.
Finally, in Lebanon, we also had a military engineering force under UNIFIL.
Between 2006 and 2013, I got to know all these theaters of operations and befriended many who were assigned to the noblest of missions: peacekeeping.
Nothing leaves us more fulfilled at the end of a day’s work than knowing that everything we do has a greater purpose on a global scale.
Every day during those seven years, I was a man on a mission to help bring peace to the world.
After my military career came to an end, I found myself in a position where I needed to take a leap of faith and seek employment within Belgium’s European institutions.
Following a three-month stay in Brussels, I was fortunate to be offered a position by an EU-funded NGO.
My role involved facilitating projects financed by the European Commission, with a specific focus on consumer protection and market surveillance.
I was engulfed in the EU corporate grinder, but my full metal jacket had me covered.
Things were going great. But life had other plans.
The sudden coronavirus outbreak in China made everything go haywire. I managed to come back home before the world closed down. But all of a sudden, I was seeing my plans go up in smoke. COVID-19 locked me inside four walls, but it also drove my mind to once again roam free. And this is how you found me here today: writing these words and inspiring others with my stories.
Closing thoughts
Moving from ballpoint to a full metal jacket helped me realize how we can transcend ourselves and open our minds to the unforeseeable.
We all have the potential to be better and do more good in this world if we commit ourselves to living up to our full potential. Our limiting beliefs are the only thing stopping us from achieving greatness.
The sky has no limit to the human mind; hence, from here, I allow my fingers to flock like swallows over the laptop keys and fly away to infinity.
I’ll leave you with this thought. Has your life gone full circle?
Rui Alves is a former Army Sergeant, language teacher, published author, international book judge, and publisher. He runs Alchemy Publications and serves as editor-in-chief for The Academic, Portugal Calling, Engage, Rock n’ Heavy, Beloved, Zenite, Poetaph, and Babel.
My friend you write special words of wisdom when your fingers flock like swallows over your keyboard. I’m glad you started to become so creative after Covid 19 derailed your plans.
I know what swallows mean to you - so Per Aspera ad Astra 🌟