[caption id="attachment_2187" align="alignright" width="192" caption="Photo by 華氏103"][/caption]
The main stream media recently reported on the starting salaries of graduates in 2008 which was released by SMU, NTU and NUS in their respective graduate employment surveys.
My own sense of the figures are that they are somewhat high because they were taken prior to the economy feeling the full effects of the global economic recession brought about by the US financial crisis. This post doesn’t debate which courses lead to a better career money
-wise but rather to the underlying reasons WHY we choose a course/career in the first place.
Your Career Choice: Money or Love
When I was leaving JC and considering what course to take up, it was really about money. My decision then was based on which undergraduate course would be easy to get a job and provide a career path. I was then still pursuing the “Singapore Dream” of the 5Cs being young and naive. Now that I am older and slightly less naive, I look back and realise I never really considered the real choices I had then which was: MONEY or LOVE?
We have to work for a living. But if that work is unfulfilling and soul sapping then we are making a dying instead of making a living. When I was 19 years old and thinking of what course to pursue, it really didn’t dawn on me that the real choices were to pursue a course that I love or to pursue my passion.
What was my passion when I was 19? The usual, trying to get a girlfriend, playing computer games and generally being a clueless pre-adult that I was.
I know now what I didn’t know then was that if you truly have a passion and you pursue it, chances are you will succeed in it. The problem, which faced many of my peers when growing up, was that the measure of success was (and still largely, is) using money.
You are deemed successful if you make a lot of money relative to your peers even if you hate your job and would gladly trade it for a lesser paying but more fulfilling one. You are complimented, admired and referred to positively by people around you by the car you drive, your residential address and how you spend your money.
It takes a brave soul to not make use of money to measure success in life. Read more...
Thanks Derek for featuring this post.
Be well and prosper.