The Career

By Sabin Chakradhar

What do you want to be when you grow up? I asked my 5 year old nephew. He told me that he wants to be a Spiderman. I asked the same question to my 9 year old niece and she said she wants to be a pilot because she will be able to travel all around the world. As a child, everyone has many pictures of what they imagine themselves doing in future. When I was young, I had many aspirations as well. Most of them were mere fantasies and unrealistic. As I grew up, my options narrowed down as I started to realize my abilities and limitations. By the time I was in tenth grade, rather than knowing what I wanted to be in future, I was surer about what I do not want to be.

In the society where I come from, the first preference of almost every parent is to make their children a Doctor or Engineer. The ‘Trend’ was that: after school, the students who get first division in their SLC (School leaving Certificate) examination must choose ‘science’ and those with second and third divisions have to choose ‘Management’ or other subjects in the high-school, regardless of the students will. However the trend is changing nowadays and people choose their career based on their interest rather than based on their score on exam. I was rather determined that I will choose science whether or not I get the first division in SLC examination, which I did.

After completing the high school, I was mostly interested in two things: computer software and art. So, I applied for the entrance examination of ‘Institute of Engineering (IOE)’ which is the most reputed university of the country that offers the bachelor degree in different Engineering field and Architecture. IOE entrance examination is a tough competition and only selected few get the admission out of about ten thousand applicants every year. We were allowed to apply for more than one subject at the time but we had to set priorities. I chose ‘Computer engineering’ and ‘Architecture’ as my first and second priority respectively. When the result came out, I got 79.1% and got qualified for the admission in Architecture. Had I got the score of 80%, I would have been qualified for the admission in ‘Computer Engineering’ and would probably be making some nice animations or cool apps right now.  So, the 1% marks changed my career from ‘Computer Engineer’ to an ‘Architect’. It seems like I did not choose this career but this career chose me.