Engineering One’s Passion into Profession

If you’re a typical parent with the dreams OF PACKING your children for engineering and medical schools when they grow up, then stay braced, I am pulling punches at you. What if you were insisted on reading this article with your monitor in an upturned position or in any other angle which you don’t like?

Don’t you wish things to be your way!!

This is the decision making season for UET, NED and other engineering universities aspirants who are prowling our dear country’s streets .As I have just wallowed in the all this admission-tests hype and have come across so many of those wannabe engineers, think there are more likes of saeed-anwar (highly talented but born followers, who sometimes end up with a beard in mid age or old age) in our country Imran-khan (born leaders) types. These students are planted in their career fields (amongst other of their likes) rather than being placed there. Many of them just want to be an Engineer/Doctor because they think it’s nice to be one. The ingredients for their career decisions and the way it (career decision) is made is given below
Ingredients for career decisions of typical engineering university aspirant ….

• Parental suggestion or advice or still worse command (more on this below)
• An engineer(s) whose the son of the khala of the taya of candidates mother or any other relative or a friend who is an engineer/medic
• Crowd followers around(which most of them are)
• Certainty of job

But excuse me there is one more thing which should be the root of the decision for a career and that is love for it .In making a decision to become an engineer or wateva INTEREST should be factor of prime importance It’s just like getting printouts from a printer in the absence of an ink cartridge. What good such a printer is, I leave it to you. Most of the students just tread the beaten path; just like an Ustad xyz khan in music forces his offsprings into his industry, our parent and our society direct our youngsters to engineering and medical (e and m) pastures. So here we stand, every ali and umer aiming for e and m career.

For those of you who watched the spectacle on the day of entrance test of UET,Lahore 27th July when an eid day like crowd of twelve thousand plus students (or yuppies)and their loved ones converged in droves to the University for gambling with their fates, must have realized that how far we have dragged this engineering mania in the twenty first century. The University can absorb only about twelve hundred students which mean that more than ten thousand students and their loved ones who on that hot and sultry morning abandoned their warm beds in favor of the UET’s sweat-arousing air condition-less campus did it on their own peril ,not to mention the three hundred rupees they squandered on entry test fees .Indulging in a little math I would say that as each candidate drains three hundred rupees on test fees and same amount on the prospectus later so ten thousand wannabe engineers dump/ed a whopping six million collectively .This is fine as the whopper amount goes into the coiffeurs of the finances of the UET but a dream of getting into engineering or medical universities includes the fees these students pay for preparation from the academies such as KIPS, The Star institute ,Students INN and Rana academy et al. In toto our nation is pumping more money in chasing the engineering and medical dreams than we could ever imagine and to exaggerate a bit I would add that our spendings on chasing the engineering and medical dreams might well be exceeding the GNP of a poor African republic. I plied my mind in one of the reputed entrance test preparation academy where our prof. elucidated on the last day that the only reason one becomes engineer is earning livelihood and to my astonishment there was a tacit approval from students as if had just uttered what they were dying to hear .Duh!!

I might be from the silent minority who think interest, interest and interest should also be given the chance too and those who gave interest a chance in career decisions do reap gold later .Take Fakhir for example, he was a typical UETian but his conscience later started dancing to the beats of music and see he’s our heartthrob now, even after drilling his mind in engineering studies for four years, he went after his interest and that is paying him now. What instead if he had chosen to snub his interest in favor of engineering, He wouldn’t have certainly experienced the scent of life he is feeling now.
Even our Prophet (PBUH) advised to follow the easier path when it comes to making a choice. And what interests you is certainly easier to study for you .I am jotting this “Shikwa” to dress my fears that many of my contemporary potential Elvis Presley’s,picasso’s ,rembrandts ,Junaid Jamsheds and Noor jehans are going to waste just because they chose to move with crowd ,a trait which conflicts with the attitude of every legend .

Some (weird*) career ideas…
• If you are too much of a junooni and like music too why don’t you try music for a career….
• If you think your looks are worth something ,why don’t you think about driving your car in the glamour lane …
• The story of Professor John nash impersonated in “A beautiful mind” were enough to convince one that trying math as a career can be a good idea
• If you’re good at lying and fooling others try politics as a career. (pun intended)

Just last fortnight I read views of a Pakistani professional in US who’s written a book on Mughal art that “most people in our society adapt careers mainly on the basis of earning livelihood and not no the basis of love(as they should do).