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Yeah, gatekeeping and all that jazz, I agree there, but I'm going to go ahead and say that the average US college freshman student probably does not have it as 'tough' as the average US boot-camp inductee. I would extend that to the integral of 'toughness' over the tenure of the average US college 4th year student versus the average 4th year US service member, but it's more of a crap-shot with the Air Force ;).

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The average 4th year US service member will probably have put up with massively more crap than the average college graduate. Which makes them tough in a specific way. That seems plausible enough :)

What I was objecting to

A) "Life is tough/ college isn't". Put in those terms, "Life is tough, X isn't" works for basically anything. And, I would argue, military service is closer to college (specific schedules, insulated from real world, the amount of time spent on PS/XBOX) than real life.

B) the tone that seems to indicate that the military has a monopoly in all types of toughness.

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