Free sample essay on Choosing a Career. Casual approach in choosing a career or profession can prove very harmful. It reflects indecision, lack of dedication, purpose and carelessness.
Casual approach in choosing a career or profession can prove very harmful. It reflects indecision, lack of dedication, purpose and carelessness. Gone are the days when birth, caste, heredity and family decided one’s career. One followed the footsteps of one’s father in India. Now, life is very complex and these are the days of specialisation. There is an infinite variety of professions and jobs, which may lead one to confusion and bewilderment. It makes the choice of a career all the more difficult. The lack of proper guidance and counseling further worsens the situation. Consequently, young men and women are seen groping in the dark and making wrong career-choices. The ever-increasing number of job- seekers, ill-equipped to make right decisions in the matter, has generated a lot of frustration, hopelessness, alienation, unrest and acts of indiscipline. It also means a waste of human resources and national wealth.
The right and timely choice of a career is of fundamental importance. It is so crucial that the future success or failure of a person depends on it. A correct choice of career may lead to success, happiness and prosperity, while a wrong and late one may lead to sorrow, repentance, failure and lifelong frustration. The fruits of wrong and late decisions are numerous and bitter. To avoid these, one should try to choose one’s career as early as possible, preferably at the high school stage, according to one’s aptitude and resources. But school-going students are not the best judges in the matter as they are immature and inexperienced. They need sincere guidance, counseling and help, which can be very well provided by the teachers, counselors, elders, and professional experts in the field.
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Young people are ambitious and impatient. They aspire for top positions and careers without taking considering their skills, intellectual capacities, and aptitudes, financial and other resources. A young man or woman may hitch his or her wagon to a top post or to the I.A.S. but may end up as a petty clerk or a receptionist. One may desire to become a star in the film- world and may end up as a mere casual artist or helper in the industry, or even worse. Choosing a profession for life is a little more than building castles in the air. It is no use shooting in the dark and hoping to hit the bull’s eye. Vain efforts, ill- considered decisions and ill-conceived plans lead to repentance, failure, frustration and waste of national talent.
Our defective education and examination system and policies have further added to the confusion. What is needed now are immediate and fundamental changes in our education system, to vocationalised and diversify it at secondary level by introducing knowledge and skills that may enable a student to take up remunerative work without necessarily having to go in for higher education? There should be plenty of vocational courses to choose from at the +2 level. There should also be counseling and guidance services in each and every secondary school to help students in choosing their careers according to their aptitudes, skills, qualification and resources.
There are many training institutions, polytechnics, industrial training centres and professional colleges but they are not of much help in the absence of career guidance services. Therefore, the selection of the right profession and right institution has become difficult and complex and needs full consideration and professional approach. There are many careers and professions, such as teaching, engineering, law, technical trades, business, commerce, computer programming, banking, finance, journalism, publication, government employment, positions in police and armed forces, besides starting one’s own shop, factory or workshop. Then, one can choose acting, films, commercial art, and photography or become a stenographer. But each and every profession requires special skill, training and know how. One cannot choose a career at random.
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Choosing a career is no more a matter of one’s likes and dislikes. There are many other factors to be considered. Besides mental makeup, capability and interest, the financial resources also have to be taken into account. One may want to become a doctor, executive, business entrepreneur or a computer engineer and may be well qualified to enter a medical, business or engineering college, but cannot do so if financial resources and the required means are lacking. In such a condition one will have to settle for some humble and less ambitious career. Change of career midstream may prove very risky, and so, a career should be selected very carefully and with full planning and deliberation and consultations with parents, teachers, elders, friends and professionals.
One can take to politics if one has an aptitude for public life and skills to make the people listen and follow. You need not pay heed to the saying that politics is the last refuge of the scoundrels. There have been many highly noble souls and personalities in politics. Take for example, Gandhiji, Pt. Nehru, Deshbandhu Chittranjan Das or Aruna Asaf Ali or Sarojini Naidu, to name only a few. It is a profession full of ups and downs, sudden reversals of fortunes and, at times, long drawn out struggle and strife. If you possess staunch optimism, strong determination, ambition for fame and popularity and are prepared to face the worst and yet turn it into the best, you are well-suited for the career of a politician. Similarly, if you are adventurous, bold and dashing, you can choose a military or a police career. There your abilities, skills, and aptitude, etc. will find full scope to flourish and blossom.
If you have an aptitude for studies, books, magazines, learning and teaching, you may join the teaching profession as a teacher in a school or a lecturer in a college. Again, if you have enough money and resources and want to grow rich, you can choose to start your own business. The choice is yours but needs a very careful selection, for once you have chosen a career, it is not possible or advisable to retrace your steps. While choosing a career one stands at cross-roads, with many roads converging on the point and you have to decide which one to take. Once the die is cast, there is no way out. In deciding your career you have to be practical, logical, rational, and shrewd. This is a crucial choice which will make or mar your future and also that of others who depend upon you.
