Today, I gave a career talk at a low-income school in Hyderabad.
A friend from the US who works in the school, as a part of the IDEX fellowship had called me for this as part of the 'Career Day' at the school .
To give you all a little background, IDEX is a social exchange programe that works at creating a common platform for people across the globe to dedicate a certain duration working for the upliftment of the socio-educational sector in developing countries. A few friends of mine -mostly fresh graduates from US & other countries are a part of this and while some of them work as consultants , some even teach in these schools in Hyderabad & other cities.
Almost inspiring, if little ironic, to see all these amazing educated, young folks my age, leave their own countries ( and all their 'developed' world comforts !) & come to India to serve our society, barely earning enough to cover their living expenses, while we the native counterparts with all our contacts & resources, slog as corporate slaves in the corporations of THEIR countries! ( excuse me , if you're not one of those. I know i am )
Now about the ' Career Day' at the school ----I don't know if I'm 'qualified' enough to preach/lecture about career as yet, considering that I've started out just a couple of years back myself, but it was the first time, I was addressing a gathering to impart any sort of valuable information and being looked upon as an esteemed guest/role model and I had a job to do here.(the pressure!)
A few other people from different professions & companies were called too and all of us were expected to tell the kids about our jobs, our companies & what we did to get there.
Though when my turn came, I blanked out for a bit. I hadn't prepared anything. I just did not think that talking about MY education, My career path and the company I work at right now was relevant to these kids at all, at this point.
I do realise the idea here is to let the kids be aware and informed of all the choices that exist, to give them the exposure that they need to get started in their introspection of what they want to do, when their time comes. But here was a bunch of kids from age 9-13 , coming from families against whom they won a battle of sorts to get a shot at education, however basic. A background so humble and limiting, that most of them had never even used a computer, (leave alone knowing what 'Google' was & how I helped it in making its billions.) Compare this with the privileges we had right since school pouring over college & beyond. Fully-functional private schools with huge fees, shakespeare recitals, programming lessons , laptops, wifi, what not. As much as I know that mine is a liberal company that has its doors open to all , regardless of age, ( well of course we dont hire child labour), sex, economic background, I'd be in denial, if I thought that my company - or any Top-rated Multinational- goes looking for potential recruits from the humble NGO-supported colleges/universities and not the top-tier, elitist colleges in top cities. Maybe I'm wrong but I somehow didn't think it right giving the kids any unrealistic hopes about what the world was going to be like for them in the next say 5-6 years.
What I did speak instead about was enjoying your education and school life. Studying for learning and not clearing exams, developing an interest in 'information' per se via reading, focussing in class , talking with people...Going beyond the universally-shared dreams of becoming a 'Doctor/engineer/lawyer' and actually discovering what your strengths are & working on them early on. I referenced celebrities like MF Hussain and Lata Mangeshkar etc , who wouldn't have been what they are , had they not figured out their strengths and made it their 'calling' from a young age .
( sounds like something from that movie 3 idiots, yes ?)
I don't know how much of my 'talk' was understood or even absorbed by the young kids, enthusiastic & respectful as they were. Irony was, just after me , here was another speaker , a doctor, who with all due respect , constantly emphasized on the importance of being a doctor, getting good marks, 'scoring at east a 70%' in exams' , etc. I don't disagree with this train of thought. After all it's worked for all them and thousands of others . But the disconnect here is we need to remember that India is a huge country. Every person can't or need not be a doctor/engineer/IT person here. What we need is more talent , more enterprise and definitely more respect for any kind of occupation/profession as long as one has a skill in it... I truly believe that it's this limited mentality in India that has us put certain professions on a pedestal and look down upon the other indispensable but so-called 'lowly' professions , for eg , a plumber/ electrician/tailor which might needed lower skills , but are respected abroad, nonetheless,...
( Yeah, try telling off a carpenter in the states & calling him names for not doing a job upto good like one does in India!)
We want to tell our future generation , and tell them right now when they have impressionable minds, and make an attempt to veer them away from the conventional thought process of everything centering around exams & marks & a plum profession. Oh I'd be amazed to see if along with all the wonderful work that's being done by the various NGOs & institutions in the education sector, also focussed was honing individual thought & giving our country a billion self-employed, proud, and hard-working citizens instead of just a bunch of hopefuls that dreamed of landing a job at an MNC and more often than not, got it .
Anyway, tracing back to the event, at the end of the day, the experience was enriching, thought-provoking and very nostalgic. Being in the premises of a school after close to 9 yrs, I couldn't help imagining myself as one of those girls with a pigtail sitting in the back, with snot-filled nose and getting caned by the 'miss' for talking in the class :) Nothing has changed, really.
A friend from the US who works in the school, as a part of the IDEX fellowship had called me for this as part of the 'Career Day' at the school .
To give you all a little background, IDEX is a social exchange programe that works at creating a common platform for people across the globe to dedicate a certain duration working for the upliftment of the socio-educational sector in developing countries. A few friends of mine -mostly fresh graduates from US & other countries are a part of this and while some of them work as consultants , some even teach in these schools in Hyderabad & other cities.
Almost inspiring, if little ironic, to see all these amazing educated, young folks my age, leave their own countries ( and all their 'developed' world comforts !) & come to India to serve our society, barely earning enough to cover their living expenses, while we the native counterparts with all our contacts & resources, slog as corporate slaves in the corporations of THEIR countries! ( excuse me , if you're not one of those. I know i am )
Now about the ' Career Day' at the school ----I don't know if I'm 'qualified' enough to preach/lecture about career as yet, considering that I've started out just a couple of years back myself, but it was the first time, I was addressing a gathering to impart any sort of valuable information and being looked upon as an esteemed guest/role model and I had a job to do here.(the pressure!)
A few other people from different professions & companies were called too and all of us were expected to tell the kids about our jobs, our companies & what we did to get there.
Though when my turn came, I blanked out for a bit. I hadn't prepared anything. I just did not think that talking about MY education, My career path and the company I work at right now was relevant to these kids at all, at this point.
I do realise the idea here is to let the kids be aware and informed of all the choices that exist, to give them the exposure that they need to get started in their introspection of what they want to do, when their time comes. But here was a bunch of kids from age 9-13 , coming from families against whom they won a battle of sorts to get a shot at education, however basic. A background so humble and limiting, that most of them had never even used a computer, (leave alone knowing what 'Google' was & how I helped it in making its billions.) Compare this with the privileges we had right since school pouring over college & beyond. Fully-functional private schools with huge fees, shakespeare recitals, programming lessons , laptops, wifi, what not. As much as I know that mine is a liberal company that has its doors open to all , regardless of age, ( well of course we dont hire child labour), sex, economic background, I'd be in denial, if I thought that my company - or any Top-rated Multinational- goes looking for potential recruits from the humble NGO-supported colleges/universities and not the top-tier, elitist colleges in top cities. Maybe I'm wrong but I somehow didn't think it right giving the kids any unrealistic hopes about what the world was going to be like for them in the next say 5-6 years.
What I did speak instead about was enjoying your education and school life. Studying for learning and not clearing exams, developing an interest in 'information' per se via reading, focussing in class , talking with people...Going beyond the universally-shared dreams of becoming a 'Doctor/engineer/lawyer' and actually discovering what your strengths are & working on them early on. I referenced celebrities like MF Hussain and Lata Mangeshkar etc , who wouldn't have been what they are , had they not figured out their strengths and made it their 'calling' from a young age .
( sounds like something from that movie 3 idiots, yes ?)
I don't know how much of my 'talk' was understood or even absorbed by the young kids, enthusiastic & respectful as they were. Irony was, just after me , here was another speaker , a doctor, who with all due respect , constantly emphasized on the importance of being a doctor, getting good marks, 'scoring at east a 70%' in exams' , etc. I don't disagree with this train of thought. After all it's worked for all them and thousands of others . But the disconnect here is we need to remember that India is a huge country. Every person can't or need not be a doctor/engineer/IT person here. What we need is more talent , more enterprise and definitely more respect for any kind of occupation/profession as long as one has a skill in it... I truly believe that it's this limited mentality in India that has us put certain professions on a pedestal and look down upon the other indispensable but so-called 'lowly' professions , for eg , a plumber/ electrician/tailor which might needed lower skills , but are respected abroad, nonetheless,...
( Yeah, try telling off a carpenter in the states & calling him names for not doing a job upto good like one does in India!)
We want to tell our future generation , and tell them right now when they have impressionable minds, and make an attempt to veer them away from the conventional thought process of everything centering around exams & marks & a plum profession. Oh I'd be amazed to see if along with all the wonderful work that's being done by the various NGOs & institutions in the education sector, also focussed was honing individual thought & giving our country a billion self-employed, proud, and hard-working citizens instead of just a bunch of hopefuls that dreamed of landing a job at an MNC and more often than not, got it .
Anyway, tracing back to the event, at the end of the day, the experience was enriching, thought-provoking and very nostalgic. Being in the premises of a school after close to 9 yrs, I couldn't help imagining myself as one of those girls with a pigtail sitting in the back, with snot-filled nose and getting caned by the 'miss' for talking in the class :) Nothing has changed, really.
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| Those! very important :) |
