Combine Careers to Reach Your Potential

When it comes to careers, most of us are pre-programmed to follow one career and prepare for it. Most times, this is based on opportunity and finances and not so much on ability and aptitude. However, increasingly there are options available that account for combinations of different aptitudes within people thus giving them the choice to combine what would at first appear to be two different career streams.

Options such as those which combine an aptitude in management with a passion for retail. Or an aptitude for all things technical and an innate ability to plan finances. Such combinations not only enrich professional lives but also provide a practical back-up in case of career problems. Linked career combinations help you to pursue similar fields with a little different perspective and to keep your motivation levels high during changed situations.

Management courses can have various combinations; retail management, entrepreneur development program, Six Sigma Certification, project management, psychology to add more value to the core management program of Marketing, Finance, Human Resources, International Business etc. Computer Programming, BCA, MCSE etc can have combinations with web and graphic designing, Mass Communication, 3D and Animation etc. Similarly, literature students can opt for foreign languages, creative writing and copy writing combinations to have an added advantage in their chosen career. Law students can opt for Cyber Law, Intellectual Property Law and corporate law as value adds. However, it is important to make sure one is working on one’s core area of competence before looking at adding value to it through a combination.

There are numerous occupations that attract or are compatible, with two or three combinations according to your personality patterns.

1. If your personality allows some combinations in an unusual way, keep in mind: You are not abnormal; we all have differing gifts. Value your uniqueness.
2. Choosing an excellent career is likely to be more challenging, but there are many career options for which you are uniquely qualified. And, once you are in a career, you will likely find opportunities to do tasks which better fit you.
3. You may need to look for ways outside of your core work area to satisfy the other side of your personality.
4. Professional career counsellors are well qualified to help. You may want to seek the help of one.

These combinations will help you fulfill your creative urge and will equip you in something you like doing, not something which your parents wanted you to do.

Apart from fulfilling the creative urge, these combinations also help in acquiring knowledge, specialisation and control in the specific domain. After assessing your strength and choosing the combination, stretch yourself to achieve the desired goal. Nothing comes easy in life, but the effort to try and do what you want to do is always worth it.

A matter of degree, not kind

A very good article in ET...

It is notable that 175 years after Macaulay's minute on education, which led to monumental changes in pedagogy and learning here, things remain very much in a state of flux.

Now, in calling for changing the medium of public instruction from ‘Sanscrit and Arabic' to english, and its contents metamorphosed from ‘sacred books' to, generally speaking, ‘the poetry of Milton, the metaphysics of Locke, and the physics of Newton,' Macaulay was of course prejudiced, conceited and plain biased.

But it cannot be gainsaid that he was a public policy enthusiast with remarkable vision. As we contemplate path-breaking reform in the domain of higher education, holistic policy design needs to be the watchword.

For instance, it is welcome indeed that the mavens seek to integrate the various streams under a single, overall umbrella for proper oversight and genuine cross-fertilisation of ideas.

However in tandem, there is no reason why all first degrees, across streams, need not be the BA, as is very much the norm in the ancient universities.

Our educational institutes do need to aim at being world-class of course, and we cannot any longer afford to remain contend with a few holiest of the holy centres of learning which anyway contribute precious little to domain knowledge and thought.

The point is to improve standards across the board, with stress on inculcating new knowledge and practices. But in tandem, we surely need uniform nomenclature for the first degree.

It would bring about much-needed inclusiveness across disciplines. And with common degree certificates and honours grades, graduates can look forward to postgraduate education in law, business and medicine. The world's leading universities follow such a system.

It is also notable that Macaulay based his reasoning on facts and analysis, although the unabashedly superior tone in the minute certainly seems quite uncalled for.

After all, it is a no brainer that higher attainments in industry and commerce also tend to show up in parallel literary achievements.

In his note, he was, as chair of the Committee on Public Instruction, excised over what in today's parlance can be called the cost-benefit ratio of public education. There was a ‘lakh of rupees' at the committee's disposal, we gather. But the expenses were thoroughly questionable, it is averred.

The policy hitherto had been to provide stipends to students enrolled in ‘Arabic and Sanscrit' colleges. Macaulay cites the figure for December, 1833. ‘The whole amount paid to them is above Rs 500 a month’, it's surmised.

And what is the fruit of all this? A petition was presented last year to the committee by several ex-students of the Sanscrit College, it is revealed.

And the petitioners are said to have added, “we have but little prospect of bettering our condition without the kind assistance of your honourable committee...” They have wasted the best years of life in learning what procures for them neither bread nor respect, adds Macaulay.

We might with advantage have saved the cost of making these persons useless and miserable, he concludes.

And those who learn ‘English are willing to pay us,' the minute enunciates. The amount realised from the ‘out-students of English for the months of May, June, and July last — Rs 103', it is documented.

The point made is the pressing need for up-to-date knowledge, skills and broad-based learning.

Fast-forward to the here and now, and it is indeed welcome that the proposed National Commission for Higher Education and Research is to replace the stodgy UGC and the corruption-ridden All India Council for Technical Education. It also makes perfect sense to include purview for medical and legal education in the commission.

In the ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the first degree remains the BA, never mind if one reads history, land economy or engineering. There is certainly a case for professional bodies to retain accreditation functions.

But the idea of a uniformly termed first degree, with a common system of markings, grades and ‘classification,' cannot really be faulted. Besides, we do need to set up new institutes where students can read various subjects all under one roof.

In this day and age, when knowledge is a clear source of competitive advantage, compartmentalisation just makes no sense.