Abstract
This article is based on a participant observation study of a basic training course in the Israeli Defence Forces. Attention was initially paid to a wider variety of problems facing the draftees during their initiation into the army. It soon became apparent, however, that their major difficulty involved "doing time " or making it pass as quickly as possible. This therefore became the focal concern of the study. Two aspects of the problem were analyzed—the cyclical perspective that the draftees were forced to adopt in place of the linear one usually adhered to in civilian life and the various ways (seeking information, passing time, and killing time) in which they tried to overcome the difficulties that this entailed. The results of the study are compared with those found in other analyses of army life and total institutions in general.
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