Monday, August 24, 2009

What do you want to be?



A few days ago I had a chat with a German colleague and he asked a question I found to be somewhat weird. In our discussion he spoke about his siblings and what they are into or what they would want to do in future. He then posed a similar question to me and I was somewhat taken aback.

To him it was very natural for an 8 year old kid to know what he/she would want to be in the next two decades. I on the other hand thought it was close to impossible to choose your future before you have added a BSc or a BA to your CV. After thinking through it for some time, I realized his approach should have been the natural situation everywhere. But my world obviously does not permit that.

When I was in Class 6, I remember how my classmates and I stood up one by one and mentioned the professions we would want to undertake in future. Just as expected, most of us came up with the fanciful job tags such as the Lawyers, Doctors, Engineers and Pilots without knowing the first things about those jobs. Today I look back and see myself as a software developer, though I wanted to do some diagnosis for the sick or listen to people’s psychological traumas and come up with suggestions. For my other mates who wanted to end up in the courtrooms as lawyers or in cabins commandeering airplanes are not there, they are either in better places or have been pushed by the system to consider other alternatives.

Can’t we live in a world where kids can choose what or who they would want to be and get access to the guidance they would need to make their dreams come to pass? Why someone’s dreams should be shattered just because she engaged in coition with a male and got pregnant. Why should the high school kid be refused admission into the medical school just because he was one A short of the requirement? In the future can my children choose to be like me even before they lose their milk teeth?

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