Pulverised Dreams - By Abhiram Nair
There is a saying, “No other investment has such a lasting effect as the education of children. Children who go to school are healthier, more self-assured and can more easily assume a profession”. So education should be made mandatory for each and every child for their well being and for a healthy future.
Another thing about education is that it shouldn’t be forced onto a person, it should be willingly accepted. Without that acceptance, education doesn’t serve it's purpose.
India, home to more than 1.2 billion people and counting, is rather known for a very strange and bizarre practice which has happening for quite a while. It is not seen anywhere else in this world. When you are done with your high school studies and waiting for your results, you have relatives and family friends coming from all over, even those whom you have never seen in your life, and saying: “ DONE WITH HIGH SCHOOL RIGHT? GO FOR ENGINEERING. IT’S THE FIELD WITH MOST HOPE!!!"
And there starts your misery!
In a country which has the most number of highest and lowest educated people in the world, a very limited number of children make it till high school and go beyond for further education without any hindrance. Whenever a child passes high school, there starts the family's dilemma and at the right time enters many known and unknown people giving all sorts of advices and suggestions, which always, sadly, ends in ENGINEERING!
So the child is pressurized and then gets pushed into a whirlpool. Putting up a fight in the beginning and later understanding the fact that there is no fighting it, the child finally have to give up and go with the flow.
Then, starts the most miserable four years of his or her life. My life was no different.
Born in an average family, I was educated a very good school. In my lower elementary classes, I remember teachers asking, “who do you want to be when you grow up?”. I remember my friends saying football player, astronaut, soldier etc.
Mine was to be a pilot because I was always fascinated with flying. Years later, even though my ambitions changed, my academic grades remained consistent. In the 10th standard board exams, I scored very high marks.
But then, I got lazy in my 11th grade and I somehow managed just to pass. Then came the final year of high school - the deciding year, on what your real goal in life is and to pursue it in the years to follow. But I was faced with much worse problems. I was affected by a rare medical issue and I was struggling with its treatment for 3 months and was totally depressed about how I could manage to write my final exams.
Against all odds, ignoring all the possibility of failure, I worked hard day and night and attended my final exams and scored excellent grades.
The happiness, however, was short-lived.
The biggest question in my life hit me - WHAT NEXT?
While I was down with treatment, all my friends were planning their future. I was left clueless. There were debates within the family on the courses I could go for. A sudden decision was finally made based on opinions from other's suggestions as I was without one of my own.
There I was, with the only option left - to join engineering.
In most cases parents don’t even think of asking what their child aspires to be in life and simply make their kid walk a path that they feel is best for them. That is the most gruesome thing one can do to their child who has dreams and ambitions about his/her future but is helpless to speak about it.
As I was depressed and clueless on my goal back then, the only thing I could do was agree with my parents' decision and go with them to the place that I will be regretting for the next four years of my life.
Classes commenced a month later. I was in a totally different atmosphere there, trying to mingle with people I've never seen or talked to ever in my life. I felt like a penguin in a group of African grey parrots struggling to fit in. It went on like that for several days till I made some good friends. But as the classes went on full swing, my head started feeling like a pressure cooker kept inside a microwave which was about to burst!
I was totally feeling out of place, left with no choice but to endure it. After finishing the 1st year exams, I really grew more and more conscious about my passion for photography. But by then it was really late. I flunked my exams, big time. So there was no turning back. I was literally suffocating like a fish out of water, the more I realised I was in a place I didn’t fit in. Bearing my parents' faces and expectations in mind, I had to keep my interests and passions aside and bear this headache called engineering.
I was totally feeling out of place, left with no choice but to endure it. After finishing the 1st year exams, I really grew more and more conscious about my passion for photography. But by then it was really late. I flunked my exams, big time. So there was no turning back. I was literally suffocating like a fish out of water, the more I realised I was in a place I didn’t fit in. Bearing my parents' faces and expectations in mind, I had to keep my interests and passions aside and bear this headache called engineering.
After four years of hardship, here I am one among the millions of jobless engineers in the country who are facing constant criticisms from family and relatives and bearing the burden of expectations on my shoulders. Now I am forced to look up a job that doesn’t even have any relation to what I studied and spend the rest of my life working within four walls to earn a living. This is not just my story. It’s the life story of many people out there whose dreams were sacrificed so that their parents could call their child an engineer.
The main reasons for such a weird trend is because
- Parents don’t trust their children to take risks in life by doing something new. They always choose the easy way.
- They prefer to follow someone rather than make their own way.
- Lack of proper carrier guidance.
- Countless number of engineering collages make things much easier for parents to blindly choose that field rather than look for something different.
- Lack of knowledge about other opportunities.
- Jobless and ignorant people giving unwanted suggestions and advice to innocent parents who don’t have much knowledge about the opportunities that are available outside.
To every parent out there who are planning on sending your son or daughter for engineering, here are some information I would like to share:
- On an average, more than 1.5 million engineering graduates pass out every year in our country (India) of which about a million are jobless. Among the ones getting placements, only 20% get good pay. The rest work for so little salary that they won't be able to survive 2 weeks with a family in that income.
- The sad truth is that even after knowing all these facts, parents still line up at engineering collages with donations for admissions for their child. So next time before you listen to others' suggestions and advice, go to your child and spend time with your child to know his / her interests and motivate them to pursue their dreams. Or else your child will end up like millions of other children who dreamt about flying, but whose wings got clipped even before they tried flapping it.
Todays children are the ones who plays the major role in reshaping the future and face of our country with new innovations and talents. So next time when someone walks up to a parent and ask “why didn’t you send your child for engineering?”, they should proudly say, “I didn’t, because I let my child follow his / her dreams”!
At the end of the day, a secured future is what every parent want for their child. Parents can be proud of themselves for raising an amazing kid and letting their child follow his / her own path towards their success, rather than pushing them off a cliff into something they aren't even vaguely interested in.
At the end of the day, a secured future is what every parent want for their child. Parents can be proud of themselves for raising an amazing kid and letting their child follow his / her own path towards their success, rather than pushing them off a cliff into something they aren't even vaguely interested in.
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