How to choose your career
You say you know how it works. Simple isn’t it? You get above 80%, take science; if you get above 70%, you take commerce. Anything below 60% and you take arts. Sort! Right?
We have been living under these pretences for a long time now. India ranks way down in the bottom in the world happiness index. Can you guess one of the main reasons for it? I’ll tell you…. “Mere beta/beti engineer ya doctor banega/banegi!”
While we hear stereotypical sentences like this less often now, one can’t deny that choosing one’s career or subjects leading to the career is a big problem. You are either confused because you haven’t heard of certain subjects or your family isn’t allowing you to take a certain subject because they don’t see any future for you in it.
While you teens obviously get frustrated with this you have to realize where they come from. Your elders (parents and other relatives) grew up at a time when they kept seeing people being successful in science and commerce while people in the arts kept getting into risky careers.
While that was true then, things have changed now. The opportunities in every field have increased threefold. To add to it, new careers are springing up every day. You have no clue how many times I have flirted with the idea of leaving my job and travelling around the world to be a travel blogger like Dhruve Rathee or NAS Daily.
Young people today have a lot of pressure from every angle to choose a career they can be successful in. So here’s a simple list of questions you could ask yourself to come up with the best career plan for yourself.
What are my favourite subjects?
Check for which subjects you love studying. Not just because you get good marks in them. Check for subjects that excite you. Even within a subject, check for the topics that do and don’t excite you. For example, if you like science, check for which subject within the science stream excites you the most. If you like physics and find biology tedious, maybe taking science without biology in junior college will be the best plan for you. Another example could be if you like calculations and topics like that more than algebra, maybe commerce would be a better fit for you instead of science.
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Darryl D’Souza (M.Sc. in Psychology specialized in Human Resource Development and Management) is a practising career guidance and mental health professional. He can be contacted for career guidance, testing of aptitudes, personality development and similar needs.