Career options for college? Confessions from a confused journey
Its that time of the year when 12th grade students need to decide whether they want to be astrophysicists, computer scientists, or clinical biologists. Well almost, if one looks at the Indian education system, which expects 17-year olds to make up their minds and take an irreversible plunge into a ‘chosen’ stream.
In today’s age, retailers sell you stuff on a 30-day return with no-questions-asked, computer games offer a trial version to give you an immersive preview, and even companies offer internships to let candidates get a feel for the job. Yet, even today kids are expected to make career hard choices, from as early as the 10th grade.
Everytime a friend reaches out for advice on their kid’s career options, I re-live my embarrassingly confused journey, all over again.
Tracing my path
My career choice was shaped early on in my childhood by my dad, who sold me the dream of ‘becoming an engineer to build our own home’! Believe it or not, this one-liner was my sole motivation to pursue engineering. But such was my focus, that I gladly gave up this ‘dream’ on short notice, to pick Chemical Engineering as a stream (as opposed to Civil), again purely based on advice from the family.
It took me a year of studying Chemical Engineering to discover my passion. And this was in computer science. Having already picked a stream and with no option to backtrack, my next 3 years were spent not in engineering labs but in front of a PC, programming applications & building games (apart from ample time playing computer games). The only justice I did to my discipline of study was in coding to simulate chemical reactions, and building a mathematical model to program the charge-discharge lifecycle of Lead-Acid batteries, on C++.
However, if there was one clarity in my mind in those years, it was that I was incapable of deciding what I really wanted to do. Confusions continued into my final year wherein I wrote GRE (for MS in Chemical Engg), GATE (for M.Tech in Computer Science) and picked up 2 jobs (one as a Battery Engineer and other as a Software Engineer).
I eventually joined Cognizant as a Software Engineer, only to quit after a couple of years, to do my MBA. Interestingly CAT & management tests were the only other option I hadn’t considered in my final year! But thankfully this was the stage when some clarity started emerging and I decided to pursue a management career in the software industry. Years later, I still explore, switch and pickup new disciplines, but these are specializations that are complementary and help me build onto my base skills.
Keeping your options open
In my case, I was clueless at 17 and got some career clarity almost 5 years later. Perhaps I was an exception then, and kids are way smarter today. Nevertheless, expecting them to make the all-important and irreversible decision is still too much to ask for.
As one small step forward, I wonder if colleges can abolish the practice of choosing the stream upfront. Instead, all the selected students can be put through a year of learning basics across streams. At the end of year 1, they could be asked to decide, and the allotment of specialization streams could be based on their performance through the first year. This entails some change to the selection process & curriculum, but it sure might be worthwhile.
Accidental advisor
When parents reach out for advice, you end up learning more about the parent than the child, and the circumstances are usually interesting.
After a long & deep conversation with a parent on career options, when I finally enquired about the kid, he sheepishly said ‘well, he is in the 5th standard and doesn’t have an opinion yet’. This is as criminal as a parent can get on troubling a 10-year old, who has difficulty deciding the game he’d like to play the next day!
Another parent enquired and was quick to add ‘..but, my kid is very creative and outgoing, so can you suggest something other than the job of sitting in front of the laptop all day long’. Just his polite way of saying ‘anything but the apparent boring and dreary job that you do sitting inside a cubicle!’
There are also parents who are worried about their kids taking an exceptional interest in certain activities at home like cooking, and want tips on weaning them away from these, and on how to get them interested in ‘a worthwhile profession’.
New-age careers?
I try convincing these parents to give their kids enough time to start forming their own preferences. Just because a kid likes to cook doesn’t mean that he/she will become a chef. And even if they do, its well possible today to make a lucrative and highly sought after career in it. As a parent, their duty would be well done if they can introduce kids to as many diverse interests and help them gain exposure to hobbies across streams.
After all, the new-age career options aren’t just in Artificial Intelligence or Space Travel. Kids who have an engaging presence in a group and have a knack for injecting humour in any situation, could make good standup comedians. A fast-rising profession that can bestow you with celebrity status, if I look at the journey of my friend, Vikram Poddar, India’s first corporate comedian.
Those who have a thirst for travel and leading groups can live their passion organizing adventure events. Renok adventures is a travel adventure company founded by a friend, Jai Govind who has converted his passion into a day job.
For the articulate ones who can capture the world on words, what better job than becoming a professional blogger, considered amongst the dream jobs of today. Inspiring is the story of another friend, Prakash Jha who is living experiences of a lifetime by criss-crossing the country and writing about it.
Going by the fascinating story of Shivya Nath, one of India’s leading professional travel bloggers who sold her home to travel the world, afterall you may not need to ‘become an engineer to build your home’!
