Engineering- A degree or destiny?

In India, we pursue a career of our choice only after we complete our parents’ “wanted to do but failed mission”. Umm, well there is a small addition to the above mentioned statements because in India parents’ choice constantly equates to “engineering”. And for the parents who are engineers, they want to pass it on like it’s their ancestral property.  In India it’s only after engineering that we get to do what we want to do in life. It’s a course for another. We Indians share this profession as a species. It’s a cultural profession you know. If they could they would even be desperate enough to pass it on along with their chromosomes.

One such family was my friend’s, enter Mr.Ayush Nirwan (name changed…For apparently no reason). He didn’t have a clue as to what to do in life, but he knew what he didn’t want to do (yes, engineering).  Their son’s anti-engineering nature got two extremely worried parents wander into the admission’s department of a reputed engineering college in Bangalore. They now felt a little unsettled and needed assurance from an external agency. And there they met Mr.Muthuswamy. (I=Ayush Nirwan in the next two paragraphs)

The result was two “Muthuswamified brains” arrived home that evening and in the next twenty four hours I was sitting on the other side of Mr.Muthuswamy’s table with two new replicas of his brain on both my sides. The last thing I heard in that room was his first few sentences where he claimed engineering to be the ultimate door to a well settled life with a good career. It was the last thing I heard because for the next thirty minutes I was mentally debating on the very first statement he made. I kept anticipating his stands and when finally it was all done and settled in my mind, I was too exhausted to pull the show. When I got back from the debate I tried to hide the dumbfounded look on my face with a hesitant smile because I had mentally departed from the conversation within just a few ticks of the clock. While they were all still conversing, I looked down at my phone to check the time and saw that my phone’s battery was getting low. Ha! Look at that, that’s my boy. I just couldn’t resist from smiling. At least there was somebody in the room whose battery was as drained as mine listening to Mr.Muthuswamy’s speech on “the Halo around an engineer’s head”. I honestly felt brain dead.  I sat there with an expressionless face and passionless eyes and pacified my soul for what I was being to be subjected to.
This is just one case. Every year there are tons of students walking into engineering colleges out of “parents’ pressure” which is as injurious to health as peer pressure.

There are some things that we do to please others and there are some others that we do for ourselves. And taking up a course is not something you can do to please somebody, because although it technically ends in a few years it doesn’t really end. Your work is nothing but a sequel of your education.

Our parents sometimes point out to certain individuals and start yapping about their achievements and directly link it to the course. Ultimately we are all different individuals going to end up at different places and no same course can act as a ladder to somebody else’s achievements. Besides, engineering is a course and not a destiny that puts all of its aspirants at the same place. Forcing students to be in a place where they don’t need to be is not fair. Engineering could be a nice course, but the worth of something doesn’t equate to the worthlessness of the rest.

 

Submitted by:
Name: Lakshmi Ravikumar
Course: Bachelor Of Arts in Journalism, Psychology and Literature Second year
College: Jain university,Bangalore

 

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *