Well, this is the first question that comes to mind when we are thinking of career initiatives.
Parents start getting vexed about this the moment a student in India starts coming into The 9th standard or so. Many get so worked up and hyperactive that the parental anxiety overrides that of the child putting undue stress on the kids. Add the generational divide and things get worse.
To understand this better take the case when I was approached by a group of Kitty partying young ladies to address them on this topic. At first I thought this was a hoax. I mean why should kitty partying call me. to give them a small seminar on Career selection. Maybe they wanted some window dressing to ensure the hubbies would not put an end to this kitty partying. But lo.. They chased me down and even gave me a fixed date and time to appear before them. I was stymied and flummoxed.. I even had to wrangle a co-invitation to take my wife along.
And so at the appointed hour there I was in their drawing rooms facing a barrage of worries about careers and children in general.
What did I opine?
The first one was that chossing a career is like chasing a rainbow.. Sometimes you can never be sure. Like the following examples of some of my friends and what happened to their Careers.
- A Qualified pharmacist is now running a successful jewellery business.
- A qualified orthodontist is now a financial consultant.
- An army colonel invented the best selling KFC at the age of 59 .. From gun managing to frying chickens,,,,What a twist
- An electronics engineer is now a full time commercial movie photographer.
- The man who started online Amazon.com was a Wall street Financial wizard.
The second big opinion was that the time to chose a career cannot be determined with a correct date and time. The girls make up their mind earlier while the boys are a tad bit slower..maybe they are following the women here too. I mean to say it could be decided in class 9 or even halfway thorough college.. or even 5 years in the mid course of some other occupation. Almost like finding the philosophers stone..Everybody is destiny’s child.
Importantly I mentioned that engineering and medicine are not the only careers.. Now students can opt for multimedia. Aerospace, nanotechnology. Movie making, Indian idol , Robotics which are one of the many options they have…all they got to do is to have the large menu of choices in front of them. The difference of choices between a McDonald menu versus that at a Honest restaurant.
But importantly Career selection is a bit like Russian roulette. You never know when the bullet will hit you.
So don’t fret over it too much and take your chances when you can.
