How to choose the right career: V Shaashwath

JSS Science and Technology University

“The problem is you think you have time”– Buddha. I’d like to start off with that not because it’s cool to start off with a quote or a catchy comment, but because of the simple yet powerful meaning those words bear. Time is a quintessential component, an exhaustible resource for mankind, which we undoubtedly take for granted. Sometimes, we’re not in control of our own life, and sometimes we feel like we’re in a boat in the middle of an ocean called karma or irony. The other times, we are at the mercy of our laziness; we’d rather deal with the remorse of “I should have done that” than have the motivation to “I should do that“. No matter the age, it doesn’t matter how many acronyms lie beneath your name, when a person manages to make time for things that count, then he/she is a true winner.

How’s this all related to a student’s life? Well, you don’t need to blindly trust what a person has to say. An educated person would consider the aid of using facts and figures to render one’s decisions and belief. Consider you’re in the 12^th grade, and you have no idea how or why you got there, but in front of you lies the question of what you’re going to do for the rest of the foreseeable future. Feel the pressure yet? Of course, you’d be feeling the pressure; as a matter of fact, the turmoil you’re possibly in would cloud your better judgment and leave you distressed. At times like these, we’re either guided by our friends, lecturers or the most influential people in our life i.e. our parents. Don’t get me wrong, we owe all the respect and all the love to our parents but they can make choices for us only until a certain point in life, from getting to choose what color of socks the kid wears to what branch in engineering the child enters, parents have made our choices for us. That is not wrong unless you know what you want in life, otherwise if one can’t even choose what one wants do in life and lets their parents decide that, it would defy the purpose of growing up.

Now, coming to the facts and figures part, this isn’t where I include statistics from the national survey conducted from so to so date to show how many unemployed educated engineers are there in India. This is where I want to you to realize how much time we waste on something we think is a necessity and blindly make time for it, but obviously we skipped the thinking part. Consider a student A in a generic school: The school starts at 8 in the morning (consider the kid is in 11^th grade) and ends at 4 in the evening. The kid’s got IIT/CET/COMED-K coaching or whatever the world is promising to offer, spends 3 hours there, and comes home at around 8. The kid, as of now and at this point of the day, is exhausted by the amalgamation of things happening in his/her life for his/her future, right? Now, after a little while spent on taking a break, it is 9, and it is time for dinner and dinner lasts around till 10. The real fun starts here as the kid’s got loads of homework, unsolved papers, assignments, projects, tests, seminars and what not! So that’s 8 hours of school education and 3 hours of tutorials with an hour of breaks which of course, never remain as per the plan. 12 hours a day repeated for 2 years that accounts for 7200 hours (I’ve excluded 60 days a month for various parameters leading to not sticking to the schedule). 7200 hours and how’s that worked out for you? Well, if you’ve succeeded in getting your dream college for further studies, then well, that’s fantastic. What about the rest of you whose dreams were destroyed whilst forging the one which the society asks, the dreams that your parents saw for you when they couldn’t achieve them? What happens to the rest of us who are not bad at studies but are not great too? What happens to that guy who gave up on art work to study how transistors work because it’s the only thing that supposedly pays- engineering, and medicine? What is the purpose of utilizing the resource which is so perishable on something you’re not even sure about? Sometimes, the odds of an average guy getting into an esteemed IIT college is lesser than one in 10000 not because he couldn’t study enough or that he wasn’t devoted, but because of the simple reason that he/she wasn’t cut out for it.

People think that getting into IIT/ NIT or any other prestigious college is the only way to succeed in life. Are the others losers? How preposterous does that sound? But you can’t just use this line as a defense mechanism and tune out everyone else in one’s life because you couldn’t achieve something. Do what matters. Continue your passion. If you’ve not found out what you’re good at, either use your resources in finding them or give in to the fact that you’re not particularly great at anything and have to adopt a means of livelihood. It’s okay to be average and not special at something or the other. After all, if all were special then the common collective of them would be called normal, wouldn’t it? Now, that’s ironical. People around us aren’t going to stick around long enough as the education in your brain, which is one thing that cannot be taken away. So, don’t bother what others have to say. It’s you and you alone who can pick yourself up and reach the finish line. Consider streamlining the time in hand as much as possible, avoid tutorials which you’d regret joining after 2 weeks anyway, and learn on your own. And if you still can’t get it and want to actually learn more, then take the help of a coaching center. Something as simple as a sticky note with numbers written in descending order from 365 where you’d take one away each day would highlight the importance of time and would, at the very least, instill some fear in you. Dedication and sincerity to oneself is primal for anything. Lying to yourself that you’d do the work ‘tomorrow’ has to be put to a stop for one’s own good. “A stitch in time saves nine” is another emphatic line stating the importance of time and how we deal with it. Be it anything in life, if we are honest to ourselves and are contended with the work we’re putting in, it will never be in vain.

Of all the things I’ve learnt in life, one of the facts that is very vivid and universal is – The company we keep during the transition from teen to an adult contributes to 60 percent of what we become. I have amazing friends and I’ve learnt a lot from each. I’m good at studying people and can deal with emotions very well. My love for the beautiful game of football is eternal. I love to write and automobiles pick my interests. I’ve worked on a lot of innovative projects related to coding and robotics, and I am an active member of IEEE-SJCE. I am also an executive committee member in IEEE-SJCE Mysore.

About the Author:

V Shaashwath

I am V Shaashwath from Mysore, studying in JSS Science and Technology University and pursuing Electronics and Communication Engineering. Currently, I’m in my 3^rd year. I studied at JSS CBSE till 10^th, and did 11^th and 12^th from KV, Mysore.