Drill Sergeants May Hate You but Refuse to Let You Fail

As the title says, everyone at one point feels that their Drill Sergeants may in fact hate them. Well, your Drill Sergeants may hate you but generally that is because they hate seeing you fail. Their job is to turn 18 years of failure into success in 9 weeks. The story below is one such example of how they push you to succeed.Here's another feel-good story for you assholes. I had never been in excellent shape, far from fat, but not that strong. I was nailing my sit-ups. My run was pretty decent. But I struggled on my push-ups. I tried my damnedest to improve, but no matter how many extra push-ups I did on my own, and no matter how many smokings I got. I struggled to even do 20 consecutively. I was starting to fear this would be a career-ender before my career even really started.At the end of white phase we had a new DS get assigned to our platoon, DS D. He was a short, stocky, mean son-of-a-bitch! He quickly noticed my issues. He approached me in the bay during personal time one night and informed me I was his new project.

"F*ck my life" was all I could think. He started by making me do 20 pushups each time he tapped my shoulder, which was often.After a week, still nothing. I started feeling like I was not only failing myself, but him as well. He sat down with me one Sunday while I was cleaning my weapon. He brought in 3 milk crates and said to keep them under my bunk and to use those when I was pushing while in the barracks. He then started working on my form. I was only doing wide armed push-ups, and this was burning me out pretty quick. Each time he saw me doing them wide armed, he kicked my hands out from under me.After a week he brought in some milk jugs on rope which formed a crude harness. I would wear the full milk jugs and do my push-ups on the crates. This meant I could go past the marching surface and get much deeper push-ups. At the end of the cycle, during our final APFT I was amazed! I not only aced the test, but did an extra 20 above the minimum!I went to thank DS D for helping me, he laughed and said "I didn't do sh*t private. I just gave you the tools and ideas, you put in the work! Now drop and give me 50!".I don't think I had ever been so happy to push in my entire life!