January 30, 2020
Main Engineer Banna Chahta hoon!
“During childhood, he used to strum nice beats with his guitar, slowly and steadily my kid has stopped playing guitar completely! Now, in class 12, aspiring to be the topper in his class, with a long droopy smile he simply entertains himself with his oh-so-cool smartphones and immerses himself into an ocean of pages.”
Have you, as a parent ever wondered what the reasoning for this behavior might be? It all stems from the mind-boggling options the child is presented during his earlier stages of schooling. One might wonder how? To commence with, let’s do some homework.
PICTURE THIS: Your child cracked the examination with flying colors, giving you a ray of hope in the darkest clouds of admission-into-a-good-educational institute/college. The next thing we know is that the child has already begun preparing for India’s most coveted entrance examination-IIT.
I know it may sound cliché, but today, hordes of academically excellent students are pushed into this magical den of “IIT”. If that’s not enough another bunch of students are already lined up to be successful doctors. Imagine a teen studying 18 hours a day simply to be the best-why? To crack this exam and say “MAIN ENGINEER BANNA CHAHTA HOON”. Similar to Avenger’s movie, one tweak of THANOS and the child’s lost everything-all his emotions, motivations, inherent interests to pursue anything else other than cracking entrance examinations during his tenure (formative years) as a “STUDENT” per se.
Into the first year, that’s where he starts feeling the pinch…All seems hunky-dory until one fine day, it all blows up and the student (with the MAIN-ENGINEER-BANNA-CHAHTA-HOON voice yelling at the back of his mind) gets all worked up, feeling drowsy, lost, fatigued, saddened and heavy! The financial investments all seem like a big joke, we have wasted lakhs of rupees on educating this child. “MAIN-ENGINEER-BANNA-CHAHTA-HOON” still rings the bell, isn’t it? What do you call it? That’s a confused mind at work!
So, now that you have got your homework right, don’t think you’re alone in this dark pit of hell. Like you, millions of confused students resort to ill-planned and vague choices, spontaneous career outcomes, and ultimate lack of purpose in life. A life without aim is no aim at all, someone said.
Having said that, what would be your call for this horrible plight of students? What if someone had told them earlier on about the life of an engineer? What if he already knew which travel destination to be and accordingly, he could have boarded that bus? Strange but true, right? Here’s something to ease up this uneasiness as a parent…
- TALK IT RIGHT!
As a parent the foremost thing is to write down, have a healthy discussion on what makes your child tick…? You have seen him grow, you have seen him wonder, you have seen him think and very importantly you gave him birth! Obviously, you would find the best thing for a child after sitting down with him and identifying his interests with comfortable exchanges on his passionate activities and in the end give him the best career decisions.
- NOW I KNOW MY CHILD…
Very important it is to strike a healthy chord between your expectations and ground realities. Aligning it with the right cause from the beginning is what makes a good career decision maker. That’s where the first seed of the future is planted.
- YES, MY CHILD HAS A GOAL!
Ultimately, having identified if he wants to grow as an engineer or a guitarist well, one must know what is happening next. As the career choice is made, so does the career path emerge! That’s where we have utilized the best of ourselves.
Earlier, I was pretty confused if I should be going for engineering or not. However, after reading your article, I took admission in CSE at JK Lakshmipat University, Jaipur. This is has been one of the best decisions made so far. The profs have been really supportive in my learning journey and in spite of online classes, the quality of education has only improved. All this could not have been without the guidance from your platform.