A child and for that reason his parents never try to foresee the real talent within. Even
if they see, they don't market that stuff considering the future prospects of the career
in India. Hell knows how many young tennis players, marathon runners, swimmers,
cyclists, painters etc, are killed by the society as a whole just because of the
unpredictable nature of these careers. A mould has been made and we are making
copies of it over and over again with a very few who fight their way to something
different. But every body is not the revolutionary type; they accept what is being
decided for them because they too are short of knowledge on alternate careers.
A brief snapshot into why people choose established career paths.
- Family tradition
- Unable to see the fallacies in the established option
- Peer pressure
- Uncalled comparison between siblings and friends
- Cannot find alternate option
- Lack of professional guidance
- Lured by huge campuses of the desired institutes
- Brand name and it's importance
- No support for your chosen career instead criticizing is what all one gets
- Working to realize dreams of family
- Money and comfortable life
- Uncertain nature of options in which one is talented
- Breaking to pressure in initial stages when in other career moulds
- One is dumb and cannot make decisions for self
These may sound like simple but many of the above apply to major population of the
country today. This bug bites them where success comes from engineering, medical
and management and full stop. Whether one is suitable for such a career is something,
which nobody gives a thought. And when they realize it is late or too late. We all try
to achieve something for which we may have not been made. How can every student
graduating think himself/herself to be manager. Close to 1.5 L students become
managers each year.
Why?
The answers that one may expect from them are as follows.
Category 1
- Money, the biggest reason
- Respect, another equivalent big reason
- Social status to flaunt
- Sophisticated lifestyle
- Love to see people working under them
- Being your own boss (a fallacy)
- The feel of power by which one can change the fate of company
- People seeing you as a source of inspiration
- To afford a world tour with family
And to everybody's surprise only a few handful will answer these.
Category 2
- They can do this the best in best possible manner
- They want to bring about a change in the present world
- They are born for this and cannot imagine otherwise
- Biggest reward is to see one's idea affecting lives of population
There is no difference between the above two categories when they give interviews to
get into a premier institute or a company. But only a few sticks to what they say in the
second category. What happens to the first category, why do they deviate from what
they said? The only answer is that category 1 people are doing so just because they
had to, never realizing their true potential. It is the second category that justifies the
demands of a great manager, just because it is their passion and not a necessity. A
very few people get this passion for the mainstream career options and these few also
have to fight their way through in this ongoing rat race.
It is not wrong that one chooses something, which he is not, as far as he gets what he
wants. I am trying to look at the options for people who do not make it to the paths
even after trying hard and then compromise or waste their rest of lives. They fail to
understand that a person gets what he is destined for and if one goes against the
destiny doing injustice to his talent one is expected to fall.
After pondering over for three pages one might be wondering who all are the ones
really affected, and how to identify whether one is made to step in those shoes or not.
Now this is a tough one to attempt answering but I will try my level best.
There are stages to determine whether one is suited for a career option or not. Allow
me to explain this by giving some examples, which many will find close to them and
would have experienced it themselves.
Example 1
Being a science student at higher secondary level one is expected to attempt for
prestigious and the toughest entrance exams of IIT and AIIMS in the field of
engineering and medical. Everybody starts with his/her preparation for only IIT or
AIIMS never considering the other B line institutes worth. As their preparation
proceeds and when they give the first all India test or mock test they get the scores for
their performance. The first red light shows them their real picture. But, this hard
working nature of Indian scholars finds reasons enough to justify the poor
performance such as:
Had not studied the entire syllabus for test.
