Choosing "best" career

Climbing to the top demands strength, whether it is to the top of Mount Everest or to the top of your career – Abdul Kalam 

You can see a lot of websites in the internet that tells you about the degrees, disciplines, institutions and career. But here I am trying to make you think yourself about your inborn talents and taste. Whatever discipline you select – the selection must be out of your passion rather than the interest. Passion never fails, but interest does. To bring best output for any work done, passion is very much required. Towards the subjects you learn, towards the work you perform, passion plays a crucial role. Along with this, most required is the patience and enthusiasm. There is some way out each difficult situation. If you have passion towards what you learn, nothing can stop you from learning – even a bad teacher! 
Selecting suitable discipline for graduation is not that easy, but not impossible also. It is critical and important because this phase is the turning point in your life. When you think about graduation, you have to think about post graduation and also your ambition in life. That should be your goal in life – the long term goal. As a student this goal should drive you in demanding situations and success in your student life, till you reach the destination. People always advice their wards or relatives saying – you should go for “this” branch or “that” branch. Some of them talk about the “scope the branch in future” and “employment opportunities”. I would say that, these all are false imaginations. Looking at the current trend, think of what your area will make you after 10 years. 
I have seen that finally most of my students have ended up with some of the following: 
1. Research in Academic Institutions associated with teaching 
2. Research & Development in a corporate (any private company) 
3. Teaching & Research (any discipline) 
4. A business entrepreneur 
5. Research in Government institutions like ISRO, BARC, DIT, etc 
6. A government servant – IAS / IFS / IPS, etc. 
7. Joining the army / navy / air force 
8. A well paid job in banking / insurance / IT or any other sector – both private / public 

This may be the case with any of the students. If you wish to contribute something to the world within your limitations and constraints, I would say – go for one among the first seven. Before you choose any subject in graduation or post graduation, you have to think about what you want to be after 10 years. You may have to sacrifice a lot of time to think on this. It should be your assessment, only your own. You are completely responsible for this. Your parents, teachers, friends, relatives all may only supplement or fuel your thinking. It is essential that you have to strive to keep your foot strongly on the chosen areas to make your dreams come true. Always have a minimum of two alternatives – in case one doesn’t work out, you have the other. Use your intelligence to gather more information on your interested area. Now-a-days, most of the information is available in the internet. 

Few success stories 

I have seen my students performing well by running import-export business after graduating in computer science profession. Another best example – after doing electronics and communication engineering, one of my students joined an institution to learn movie direction – he was one of the toppers in the country to get admission in one among the of top ten film institutions in the country. His ambition is to direct movies in Indian screen. So it is the passion that drives you. Your ambition is your dream, your goal. 

I know one of my students – very strongly determined – who did computer science and joined a reputed IT company. Though he was not interested in IT job, he joined the IT company because there was no other choice. He is an excellent organizer, programmer, and a real “student”. Immediately after the training he felt that it is futile and simply threw the job. He is a brilliant student and wanted to use his skills for a higher and meaningful purpose. His aim was to join government organizations like ISRO. He was so deterministic that he took the challenge, struggled a lot and got through the selection procedure. Now he is one of the team members working to record the data received from the satellite. He shared his thrilling experience when the data is received from satellite deployed by Govt. of India. This should be the aim and right attitude in one’s life as a student. As of now, I would encourage to start own company in any areas of knowledge. There were a couple of students who graduated from one of the reputed engineering institutions in Tamil Nadu, way back in 2008. They wrote a code-checker program (code checker program is used to evaluate a software program written by programmers in a particular language.) to run the programming contest in their college. As usual, with several minor bugs, the program executed well. Now they are managing a reputed online start up offering recruitment services for the computer professionals. Many multinational companies in India now use their software as the platform to recruit computer programmers. All I am saying is determination on the goal, patience and enthusiasm keeps you alive throughout your career. Don’t stop! Keep going... Please comment after you read!