Croatia, clarity and careers

We were walking through the beautiful Vintgar gorge marveling at the clear, characteristic turquoise blue waters. We had been gazing at these clear blue waters for almost a week now, but we just couldn’t get over them.

Rahul: Look at the clarity of the water. (For the nine hundred and eighty fifth time)

Sailee: Hmm

Anubhav: Yeah, it definitely has more clarity than our career goals. 

The Harvard Resume

It’s been long accepted that it’s a fierce race out there, and the smart thing to do is prepare oneself to brace it well. Preparation can, of course, begin only once the destination has been decided. And it’s never too early to decide.

There are kids today, who have decided they want to take the JEE right in class eight, and what follows this clarity in vision is five years of dedicated single minded working towards the set goal. And then the kid fulfils his goal and finally enters the hallowed gates of these prestigious institutions, left quite without a goal for some time, having achieved the single objective he had. However, you must always have a goal as only then can you prepare and you must always prepare. So it isn’t long before our kid has found yet another goal. The clarity in thought is almost enviable. He knows what he wants, he is in a place where there’s no dearth of success stories to look to to and emulate  and he will soon have figured the best way to get there, and then it’s just a matter of doing exactly the right things at exactly the right times for the next four years. The path is set. A tad too set I think.

I have always been envious of this kind of clarity in thought and aim, and maybe this is just a case of sour grapes, but I have begun to sincerely believe that our generation has gotten trapped in a CV making rat race. For everything you want to be there’s a Harvard Resume, the perfect profile. And there’s a race out there to get as close to this Harvard Resume as one can. So, eventually one’s objective, the destination one is working so hard towards is but a Master Resume.

And there’ll be plenty who may see no reason to change this, but I think it’s rather ironical that resumes which are supposed to reflect upon an individual’s personality have now begun to dictate it. 

The August post

Honestly, I’ve started this post (as the title suggests) just because I’ve had a post every month for the last three and I’d like that to continue for whatever it’s worth and because I’ve spent the last hour trying to figure where to study from, for the six subjects I have, for the impending mid sems and I think I deserve a break.

If I had to describe the time since the last post, it’s been busy. I’ve completed my internship, come back to R, gone back home for a week and back to R again. There’s so much happening, but if you ask me pin point exactly what, I don’t think I’d know. Yet as I try to write this post, thoughts seem to be flowing freely.

Everyone around is busy doing what they can to ensure they can do what they wish to do once they pass out of here in a year’s time. I still have a year to go for all that, but I can’t help wonder what is it that I want to be preparing for. I am rather disappointed that even after three years of college education I am almost as confused about what I want to do for a career as I had been when I first came to R. What I regret is not that I don’t like what I came here to do – Chemical engineering, but that I haven’t yet figured what I do. No doubt I can see more avenues now, and understand better what they mean but the lack of clarity is somewhat disturbing.

But a line of thought I am growing to believe is that there is not necessarily something like figuring what you want to do forever, that’s going to keep changing. You just got to do what you like at present and move on to something else when you feel the need to.