College – More a Pit Stop Than a Destination

Many times, career choices in India are driven by n number of external factors. And this way, a student actually forgets what he actually want to become in life and looses focus or enthusiasm. Peer pressure, herd mentality, parent choices all end up making you choose your stream for college.

We end up having 80% engineers who think engineering is not the right thing for them, and 50% professors thinking they are right. We have boys and girls choosing arts and commerce just because they don’t like engineering. Ten relatives, five friends, three office colleagues, two college professors and one astrologer ( Not always) are consulted before one chooses one’s academic and professional career at different phases of life.

One person is noticeably absent in this scheme – The person himself or herself. And more often than not, one lands into a career stream with hardly any interest or enthusiasm. Same applies to Engineering aspirants in India.

What Next?

School is generally considered a time when one can think about what to do next, what one actually want to do in life. But today, Engineering has become the new Class XII, where students are still unclear ‘what next’ because they were unclear when they joined engineering. And  its commonplace, graduate students aspiring for MBA and other higher education options right in their first or second year of college education. Why? Because they are not enthused about what they currently do and hoping MBA or higher education may be a better option to them. Again, without following their heart, they take decisions because of the ‘n’ reasons which have been haunting them right from the start of their career.

Taking that as granted, what students do to identify and pursue their passion, when education is a perceived limitation. The answer is in two steps. Exposure – Get exposed to multiple careers, talk to friends, use the internet, consult career counsellors and discover yourself. If photography appeals more than physics to you, go after it. Read about photography, leading photographers, photo styles. Get exposed to all free information available. Write to leading photographers asking for advice and direction.

All masters like to develop pupils. Sehwag and Sachin are an interesting study here. The next step is to Experiment – Take bite size chunks that you can chew. If the food is good, order it. Do a short term course or do an apprenticeship. If writing is what you love, do a few articles – Business, lifestyle, sports and post it on the net. Ask for freelance work. Put time and effort behind it. This period should let you know two things – Both experience of the work and economics behind it. If you love the experience and your wallet loves the economics, do not wait. Take the plunge.

And for all sceptics. Let me put forth a situation. You are walking for days in a desert and suddenly you find a food joint. There is no other joint after this that you know of. You sit down, study the menu and place an order for what is crowd favourite, a hot and spicy pasta – Pasta Belluci (No reference to any actress). You have it served before you. After having two slices, you realise it is not the right one for you. And you have no certainty where the next shop is. So what do you do? The sanest option is look at the menu again, now that you know what you like, what the language of the hotel is and place a fresh order. Sounds completely sane, right? You do not worry about extra money spent because it serves its cause.

A professional education switch is just like the above. And the extra money, for a youngster is his biggest credit worthy asset. And no, your hard earned college education is not a waste. It has its own advantages. Engineering gives you a structured approach to problems, a step by step analytical process to follow that can be used anywhere in life. It teaches you to break big complex problems into smaller solveable issues and crack them.

Arts, Science & Commerce, gives the student the macro picture. Moves away from defining people as bunch of high strung electrons and shows them as emotions and equations. So mainstream careers provide you the attitude, the macro picture and structured approach. But making a future in mainstream career, is something you need to decide.

College life is a great platform to explore and experiment your dreams, to know what exactly you want to do in life.  It provides you time, friends, resources to take small risks to explore new horizons. As Infosys founder, Dr Narayanmurthy said ‘Don’t be an Engineer just because you have engineering degree in your hand’. If you are doing Computer engineering, doesn’t mean you have to pursue a career in programming or software stuff only. The choices that lie before an Indian student today are exponentially larger than they were ten years before. So go ahead. Get exposed and experiment. Education is just part of the journey, and never the destination.

An Article by Entrance Corner Team