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Chandrima is the newest member of Strat.in. She graduated in Computer science and engineering from NIT Durgapur and went on to become a part of the 45th Batch at IIM Calcutta. Chandrima is an Aditya Birla scholar, heads the Consulting Club and is the co-founder of IIM C’s e-journal http://www.jokatimes.com.
As a kid, there were very few social gatherings indeed where Maashi/ Maami/ Kaku/ Mesho spared me that eternal question, “Beta what do you want to be when you grow up?” And like the average 10 year old Indian kid, I had no idea. Some of my friends though, had a lot of ideas at that time on what they wanted to be. Sadly for them, things as they stand now are markedly different from the dreams they had harboured way back in 3rd standard.
So how does the average Indian student make his career choices anyway? At the end of the day your career is a choice nonetheless, the question still remains on how many of us actually allow ourselves to choose rather than be pushed in various directions by “the forces” around us. “The forces” as I’d like to call them, an chiefly be broken down into “Parent Trap”, “Peer Baba”, “Driftwood” and “I got fired!”, as per the ridiculous names I’ve decided to assign them. These four forces shape many of us and perhaps an insight into how they work could serve as a tool to examine which direction the average student’s career takes.
Parent Trap: A doctor’s son should be a doctor, a businessman’s son should manage the family business and the rickshawpuller’s son should grow up to be a wife-beater like his father. If you go by the sheer number of star babas and babys in Bollywood you would think that dancing around trees and fighting bad guy dressed in designer jeans has some specific gene that will henceforth be passed on only to the chosen few. The lure of following in your parents footsteps is strong, and it is not genetic in nature. It about the professional network that your father/ mother has built up over a career spanning 25 years that can give you that cushy start. If you are thinking of going against conventional wisdom and breaking the cradle so to speak, networking will hold the key to ensure that you don’t necessarily have to fall into the “Parent trap”.
Peer Baba: Raju said “I wanna be an engineer when I grow up”. And just because your best friend Raju said it, the 10 year old you had also echoed his words. Some 8 years later, while studying day and night for IITJEE, you wondered where that worm of becoming an engineer actually entered your mind. Whenever making a career choice, it would be prudent for all of to see whether we are following our own dream or that of our friends, brothers, sisters, parents. All of us have our hopes and aspirations and dreams we want to chase dearly. But at times we are too lazy to lay down that blueprint for ourselves and introspect enough to come up with what we really want. Borrowed dreams don’t make for happy realities.
Driftwood: “Nothing is good enough for me. I need to find a career that suits me to the T and this is just not it.” And thus spake the lady who drifted from wannabe fashion designer to journalist to call centre executive. She’s changed 4 careers in 3 years, sometimes unhappy with the money, the hours, the firm. She doesn’t see herself grow in certain careers and others just don’t offer her creative satisfaction. For driftwoods, its never the job that doesn’t suit them. They just fail to realize that sometimes its not about what you do but who you are. Its not always the job that makes the Man but the Man makes his own job too. The initial years in any line are tough and filled with mistakes and learning. To do a good job you are careful to never risk anything, to never make mistakes. But to do an awesome job, you would need to make the worst mistakes in your career and learn from them. Sometimes its not about making the right choices in selecting your career. It is about making the right choice in sticking through the rough and turbulent initial years to finally find your calling.
I got fired!: Let’s face it, in these days of cutbacks and recession, pink is no longer a soothing colour. You can’t help the fact that your entire product team got laid off, with you in tow. Does this mean that you were bad at your job? What we often don’t realize is that competence plays a small role in layoffs as compared to circumstances. So you were not at the right level, not in the right team and perhaps didn’t not get the Boss the biggest bouquet on his birthday. Don’t let that pink slip undermine your confidence and become a force in shaping your career. No one else can tell you what you should for a living or how competent you are.
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14 Responses to “How does your average Indian student make a career choice?”
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Nice article. The classification is great and with some help from LinChat can be made a perfect classification in which almost every individual’s career choices can be listed.
As for me, I guess I am in the Peer Baba group. Got into IIT through it only. May be others also want to list about themselves.
Really well pointed fallacies in the Indian system a kid has to face. I really feel we never get the opportunity to look and decide what I want, instead we do what the system wants and think we want it.
I will lie in the same group as Shubham – Peer Baba group!
“Rickshawpuller’s son should grow up to be a wife-beater like his father” – please avoid statements like this.
Borrowed dreams don’t make for happy realities – not a generic statement. I know of hundreds of my batch-mates, seniors and juniors who got into IIT being influenced by others, and they are not unsatisfied at all. Please don’t assume that ALL of us have a dream of a “different” career, and we sacrificed that Shakespeare / Maradona / Obama within us to become what we did.
As far as parents are concerned, they MUST have a certain say in shaping a child’s career. True, there should be scope for some degree of freedom, but we all have seen what “freedom to choose a career” have done to a lot of people, especially “Gen X/Y/Z”, “urban youth” – some of them after leading a useless life trying to “pursue their dreams”, and working at “McDonald’s and Pizza Hut”, to be “hip, cool, self-sufficient”, have come begging back to their fathers to get another chance.
Please remember, this “Rock On” culture of “chasing your dreams” only works to a certain extent. Much of it is a hue and cry made by certain sections of the media.
~NOM
This topic is very close to my heart, because while preparing for GD/PIs back in 2007, I found out that I never really gave it a thought what I wanted to become. I would just add a few factors which also guides individuals to choose or not choose a certain career.
During early days in life, apart from Parent Trap and Peer baba, role model is another character which inspires individuals. I know a lot of people whose role models were their teachers and have successfully become one now. At this age, people are flexible and passionate. This is the right time to encourage individuals to explore different alternatives, but seldom people do it.
There is also a rebellious factor in young individuals which works against falling into “Parent Trap”. I know people who have seen what their parent do and have learned to hate it. The urge to be somebody else, drives them not to choose a particular career.
Another factor is the bandwagon effect. This is lead by influence of peers and the media mostly.
Later in life, when people actually start working they start having a lot of clarity about what they like to do and what they not. Its a constant learning process of rejecting careers, which ultimately leads to choosing one (optimistic) or settling for one.
Very nice article
Loved the line: “Borrowed dreams don’t make for happy realities.”
@Saha: For your frndz who are not unsatified with leading “borrowed dreams”, its just that may b they have not yet realized that they have borrowed them..
@ Saha: The line was sarcastic in nature, hinting towards the fact that the rickshawpuller’s son can dream much bigger than his father and often achieves it too, even though we fail to notice it from our middle-class balconies.
The career suited for us may or may not be “different”, it maybe the something rather conventional as I hinted in the “Driftwood” para. The idea of the post was only to take a look at the different kinds of forces that shape our careers rather than to stereotype anyone into any one class. We are all a combination of many many factors, and human beings are way too complex to be easily generalized.
Good article, Chandrima…………when I joined IIT D in 1978 after my second attempt at JEE, it was just following fathers footsteps as we never had “internet option ” , coaching / career institutes, but it was a commitment to stand on your own feet which drove me to get into professional career!However , if I was finishing my school in the present era, I would have also taken a quite a few inputs from the different platforms available in public domain!!……………Umesh
Some really nice points in the article.
“Borrowed dreams don’t make for happy realities.”
I think they can make happy realities only upto a certain level, never in long-term. So, yes you can clear JEE following your peers. But after undergraduation, one should try to be more mature in making career decisions and look for what fits you.
One should try to never borrow others dream , but one can always borrow others ideas, approaches to achieve their own goals, aspirations. So, overall one should do the right borrowing…
@ Umesh: That’s exactly what I meant in my take on people who drift from job to job. Sometimes it commitment which does make “Borrowed dreams” one’s own dreams
@ Nancy: Spot on about the “right borrowing”!
For me, getting a job for survival was a need at one point of time.
I tried to find a job after BSc but on Organization was ready to entertain a fresh Graduate.
All the Interviews I attended were for Call Center, Sales etc. which I was sure can not be my calling. I couldn’t perform there. But each Day, after each Interview made me more informed and a better understanding of my own interests, and as to where I will be happy and perform the best.
Somehow I managed to find a job after struggling for more than an Year. Here I just took the Opportunity to develop a Website even though I had no idea how to build one, but I had heard that even Kids know HTML.
That gave me a lot of confidence.
And then this was an Internet era, where you could type a few words and find documents around the web on that Subject. I just went ahead and
Within a month of working I started to feel that this was my calling..
I think it takes a lot of time if you want to take an informed and well thought of decision to choose a Career by yourself.
At 10 you hardly know what you want to do in life.
A Similar Posts by my Mentor and Friend Mr Abhishek Rungta.
Are you what you always wanted to be?
http://www.abhishekrungta.com/are-you-what-you-always-wanted-to-be/67
I vividly remember what I wanted to be when I grew up. Unfortunately, my father was against the whole “Adventuring Archeologist in the manner of Indiana Jones”, while my mother was against me being a secret agent.
My parent’s decision that I should have an engineering degree (look at Mr XYZs son, he has such good grades, he’ll get throiugh an awesome college) did not go well with certain stakeholders (me), who rather fancied a career in journalism. Heck, the only reason I gave CAT was because I knew that with English as my strong point, I could breeze through the selection process.
Right now, I am in a job that suits me the best out of all the options that we had at Joka, and I’m wondering, wouldn’t it be awesome if I took up writing part time.
Excellent article on an important topic. Coincidentally, I was just creating a website today related to this topic just before stumbling upon this article.
My take on this is… help the 6th-8th grade kids have a peek into these career fields in very simple terms. Over 2 or 3 years, they should explore and learn what they want to do. Also, I think today there are enough opportunities in every field to make good money. So, not missing out on this opportunity is even more important for this generation.
With that in mind I made this dumb website with a quarter-page of content. But, with community support it could become a fantastic resource for young people. Check it out and contribute through the comments section. Can we make a difference?
LearnOnNetProject-Career
Interesting article, it forces me to reflect back on why I actually chose to appear for JEE.
“Borrowed dreams don’t make for happy realities.”, a witty quote,but as mentioned by Nancy, the smartness is in right borrowing.
I can speak for myself, born to doctor parents, the natural career choice for me should have been to get into medicine too. But my decision to become an engineer was actually steered by my mother, who from her own professional experience could predict that hospitals were not the place for me. I believe that parents should have a major role in shaping their child’s future. As kids, we may be fascinated by certain fields, but are largely unaware of the reality, of what lies beneath. A certain profession may look glossy, or the made for us, but we at that time do not the cons, the needs and demands of the career. However, a parent’s own experience, combined with their understanding of their child’s nature, makes them a good judge of what would be best suited for their kid. The best decision can be reached by self introspection, exploring and deciding your interest, but also including your parents’ advice in your final decision.
In a way, I am following my mother’s dream, but happily, it also happens to be the right one for me.
Chandini, how right you are.
If all of us had been chasing our childhood fantasies – there would have been quite a few liftmen, truck drivers, paleontologists and a lot of fancy professions – and very few nation builders.
I am thankful that my friends who did JEE have still not realized that their dreams are “borrowed” because quite a few of them are doing quality research and some pretty constructive work for the country (one of them is part of the Golden Quadrilateral project) instead of becoming B-grade actors, local club footballers and abstract painters.
For myself, I am thankful that I did not chase my childhood dream (read fantasy) of becoming a Don Corleone (I saw the movie when I was 10), and I am happier that I had Mr. XYZ’s Son and Mr. ABC’s daughter as my inspirations to become an IIT / IIM Grad as I still believe as another “Phantom”, I would have been nowhere, and neither would the society have benefited from me