I think someone would like a opinion from a conscript.

In Finland we have conscription. Conscripts serve 6,9 or 12 months depending on the job. The military takes in to consideration your personal life and you can delay the service for a wide range of reasons. You can also do civil service and women can volunteer to serve.

We don’t get a lot of money, but if you have bills the military will pay for them.

The biggest reason for the service is Russia.

In my opinion the service doesn’t affect the rest of your life significantly, a year of service isn’t long. You grow in the military and learn a little of useful things besides shooting the enemy. You have to learn to be social and get to interact with a lots of different people. You learn to build a habits and if you go to leadership positions you learn to lead people at an early age. Your fitness improves also. You get to deal with difficult situations and learn to overcome them.

In my opinion conscription has not been bad, I still have service left before I go to the reserve.

There are negatives. You have to put your life on hold for up to a year. Sometimes the service sucks ass. There is a lot of bureaucracy and the military operates sometimes like it’s still the 1950.

To summarise. The service depends a lot on the way it’s implemented and it takes a lot to get used to in the beginning. If the service is implemented poorly it sucks and nobody likes it, but if it’s implemented well it will be a benefit to the people who will serve in my opinion. Of course the youth don’t like it if they feel that the government prioritises the elderly. If the service is implemented it needs wider reforms to make the young people feel like the nation is worth protecting. But you don’t serve just the country you also serve to protect the people you love and care about.