Skip to main content

Careers: Think beyond engineering and medicine



My friend, Ms S.K. Manimekalai, an English teacher sent me the following report on a seminar that she attended. I thought it deserves to be brought to more readers. I’m reproducing below the report as it was sent to me.

Ms Pervin Malhotra, Director of Career Guidance India (CARING), New Delhi, is India's top career counsellor. As a columnist in Times of India, her Query Columns reach an audience of 300 million people. Her Career - i - Opener test (www.careerguidanceindia.com) has been helping the youth across the nation to discover the career that is just right for them. A highly informative Career Counselling Session for the Students of Class X and their Parents was conducted by Ms. Pervin on December 29th, 2018 in the KG Hall of DPS Mathura Road. The session was also attended by the teachers teaching in classes IX and X. The following are the highlights of her keynote address: 


Robots are replacing not only mechanical jobs like serving coffee etc., but are also performing activities of an intelligent career like that of playing chess. Human knowledge is constantly evolving. Information is bombarding through internet. Life has no syllabus and careers have no curriculum. So what should be done? 

Both parents and students should change their conventional mindset of choosing careers like engineering, IAS, etc. IITs alone cannot guarantee you all success. 85% of Engineering students are unemployable or unemployed today. So no need to be obsessed with MBBS  or IIT. Even a Bachelor's degree done neatly well can take them to great levels in their career. For instance, a boy who had done his graduation in journalism was picked up by IBM and he went on to work with Oracle.

Hence, students should be given a chance to explore careers today, because there are about 3550+ careers available today and they are still increasing. We are living in an interconnected world of careers. For example, now there has emerged a new career called Mechatronics from Mechanical Engineering and Electronics. How should we prepare students then?


The process of exploring careers and choosing the right career should be started at a very early stage. Not at the last moment around their exams. They should be made aware about the fact that the knowledge level takes a quantum jump from class X to class XI. Learning should become a continuous habit and it shouldn't be done only for one time success, because an 85% scorer in class X may become a 65% scorer in class XII. Love for learning should be inculcated in the young minds. They should not stop learning only for exams, but also for their life and career after formal education. The habit of Reading Around should be cultivated by them. Reading Around is learning the topics learnt in class further by exploring and studying them through net or other resources, say newspaper, etc. and other things happening in their surroundings. 

Students today cannot complain about paucity of time to update themselves on current affairs. The three hours spent on gadgets like mobile phones can easily used otherwise. Mobile phones can be used as a learning tool to update themselves with current affairs. It is a phenomenal learning tool. For example, Quora is a site of experts and experienced people. One can make best use of the information available on this site and become well informed about various issues related to careers and other requirements.

Parents and teachers should make students realise that success can be a trap. Students who score highly in class X may not be as successful in higher classes. They can seek help of tests like 'Career-i-Opener' which might cost them less than a pizza, i.e., Rs. 495. They are certainly not sure of their future career though they announce one to the world. They should be given a chance to explore careers. Besides, we should also help them develop their communication and social skills. Because a career is not just about studies. It is also their ability to socialise and communicate. Communication skill doesn't mean that they should be able to speak in English fluently. They should also be able to listen to what the other person says and understand what they expect.  So we should let them develop their social skills as well and become successful in their career.

However, all these skills can only be nurtured by students through hard work. Young people tend to look for a career that doesn't involve so much hard work. But there is no such career that doesn't involve hard work. This should be reiterated and they should be trained to work hard. Then success is all theirs.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Country where humour died

Humour died a thousand deaths in India after May 2014. The reason – let me put it as someone put it on X.  The stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra called a politician some names like ‘traitor’ which made his audience laugh because they misunderstood it as a joke. Kunal Kamra has to explain the joke now in a court of justice. I hope his judge won’t be caught with crores of rupees of black money in his store room . India itself is the biggest joke now. Our courts of justice are huge jokes. Our universities are. Our temples, our textbooks, even our markets. Let alone our Parliament. I’m studying the Ramayana these days in detail because I’ve joined an A-to-Z blog challenge and my theme is Ramayana, as I wrote already in an earlier post . In order to understand the culture behind Ramayana, I even took the trouble to brush up my little knowledge of Sanskrit by attending a brief course. For proof, here’s part of a lesson in my handwriting.  The last day taught me some subhashit...

Sunita Williams and Narendra Modi

An Indian artist celebrating Sunita Williams' return Prime Minister Modi has extended a cordial invitation to Sunita Williams. In a Letter dated 1 Mar 2025, Modi expressed India’s pride in her achievements and extended the invitation. “After your return, we are looking forward to seeing you in India. It will be a pleasure for India to host one of its most illustrious daughters.” Will Ms Williams accept the invitation? I have serious reservations. She won’t, in all probability. Her cousin was allegedly murdered by Modi’s men during the investigation of the 2002 Gujarat riots. The young generation in India are probably not aware of the 2002 riots in Gujarat orchestrated by Modi and his party for political mileage. In the last few years, whenever I raised the question in my classes, hardly one or two students out of the 200-odd ones were faintly aware of the riots. Inhuman violence was unleashed in Gujarat against the Muslim community after some Hindu pilgrims were attacked on...

56-Inch Self-Image

The cover story of the latest issue of The Caravan [March 2025] is titled The Balakot Misdirection: How the Modi government drew political mileage out of military failure . The essay that runs to over 20 pages is a bold slap on the glowing cheek of India’s Prime Minister. The entire series of military actions taken by Narendra Modi against Pakistan, right from the surgical strike of 2016, turns out to be mere sham in this essay. War was used by all inefficient kings in the past in order to augment the patriotism of the citizens, particularly in times of trouble. For example, the Controller of the Exchequer taxed the citizens as much as he thought they could bear without violent protest and when he was wrong the King declared a war against a neighbouring country. Patriotism, nationalism, and religion – the best thing about these is that a king can use them all very effectively to control the citizens’ sentiments. Nowadays a lot of leaders emulate the ancient kings’ examples enviabl...

Lucifer and some reflections

Let me start with a disclaimer: this is not a review of the Malayalam movie, Lucifer . These are some thoughts that came to my mind as I watched the movie today. However, just to give an idea about the movie: it’s a good entertainer with an engaging plot, Bollywood style settings, superman type violence in which the hero decimates the villains with pomp and show, and a spicy dance that is neatly tucked into the terribly orgasmic climax of the plot. The theme is highly relevant and that is what engaged me more. The role of certain mafia gangs in political governance is a theme that deserves to be examined in a good movie. In the movie, the mafia-politician nexus is busted and, like in our great myths, virtue triumphs over vice. Such a triumph is an artistic requirement. Real life, however, follows the principle of entropy: chaos flourishes with vengeance. Lucifer is the real winner in real life. The title of the movie as well as a final dialogue from the eponymous hero sugg...

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl