Was reading a story from Adam [link] about his studies in forestry but working in a career totally unrelated to his studies now.
At least Adam did worked in his field for 7 years, some graduates didn’t even touch a bit of their degree related stuffs since their first day at work. I have stories of my own too..
Thinking back we were so lack in career and course couselling back then (9 yrs ago), students who got good results in STPM would choose their studies in prospectful studies like doctors, engineers etc.
I was one of the dumb ass that followed the trend and made a huge mistake choosing an education path that really wasn’t my interest.. engineering.
And gosh, what a nightmare 3+ years of studies it was. I had totally no interest in the studies, I skipped classes and actually spent more time working in various part time jobs than in classes.
The only time I attended classes was when some cute girls were in the class too.
One of the lecturer actually warned me for class skipping, but after seeing me napping in his class a couple times, he decided to not bother about me missing later on.
I’m not a genious.. skipping classes and the lack of interest did take my toll, I actually failed 11 credit hours and ended up studying for an extra semester to graduate with my engineering degree.
Actually it’s quite a sad situation for Malaysia higher education, a student like me that skipped some 50% of the classes still managed to graduate.. thanks to the large group of M students that were missing from classes as well, I was not singled out to be penalized.
Despite a rather poor degree, I still got a good engineering job due to my excellent curriculum vitae and working experience, multilangual proficiency helped too. My paid was over 3k, not bad at all for a fresh grad.. but somehow I only managed to stay there for a few months, again due to lack of interest.
Before that I always thought that money is everything, but only then I realized that life is not just about money.. passion and living the live you want is really important.
Again it’s kinda sad for Malaysia education system, subsidizing in studies only to produce graduates that are not interested with what they study and decide to work something else. A bit of pre-U councelling could have help reducing this kind of situation, which I doubt will be successfully implemented by our dear government.
June 21st, 2006 at 12:47 pm
Thanks for the link. You would be surprised at the list of places I have worked at - from mass media to NGOs. I was lucky to finally get a job I really like but I have to resign from that too to further my studies in UK. That’s life I guess.
June 21st, 2006 at 12:50 pm
Guess it’s not easy to have a perfect life, you gain some and lose some.