Engineering or your child’s happiness???

Sitting in the air-conditioned room and staring for upto ten hours a day at the monitor sipping on mug after mug of coffee. This is life for you in the software industry. So looking back at all those years, and trying to figure out how exactly I got here. Around four years back it was, the day when the CET ranking was out. There were very few options in front of you. So just as all my friends did, I too decided. That I want to be an ENGINEER. I took that decision partly because I was not well aware of all the various other options that lay in front of me and partly because most of my friends and seniors were also doing engineering. But in most cases it’s the parental pressure that leads many aspiring students to forego their dreams and take up engineering because all the parents are looking for at that point of time is a safe future for their kids. And what safer way, than becoming an engineer with a hefty pay cheque rest assured when you complete your degree.
So there begins the tedious journey of four long years. At the end of it all some succeed and others will be written off as failures. Now let’s look at the other face of the coin. 4 years, 64 subjects, 14 labs, 130 odd internals, many seminars and a project. Getting thru all this unscathed is a very big achievement indeed. But if you look at the reality, if you have specialized in anything other than a computer science or an information science. Be it mechanical or electrical or electronics or for that matter any other branch. Not even a single percent of what you have studied in all those subjects in your four year struggle called engineering will be implemented in your software professional life. And now since IT is such a boon, all parents want their kids to join the IT industry come what may. Because that’s where the growth is. That’s where the money is. That’s where the future is. Or that’s what they think.
So why did we in the first place have to do an engineering??? If we are not using a single thing we have studied day-in day-out for the last four years. What was the whole purpose of cajoling a 17 year old kid into doing an engineering? Was it just for the degree??? Or was it the money an IT professional is paid??? Or was it just for the parents to tell proudly “my son’s an engineer”???
Whatever be the case, kids these days are not like how kids of their age were 5 years back or 25 years back. They start dreaming about what they aspire to become when they are really young and they work towards it. They have the technology to back them and they have the self-belief to help them reach their goal. All they require now is the help and support of their parents. Your daughter might want to become a pilot or your son might want to become a professional footballer. All that’s required of the parent now is to act as the stepping stone to your child’s success. I know so many parents of many more aspiring young talented kids will be reading this. It’s a request to all of you. Never ever compromise on your child’s dreams for a mere engineering degree which will land him a techie job about which he will crib for the rest of his life. Let him live his dream. At the end of the day you child will make you proud. As Aamir Khan told in Tare zameen par “every child is special”.

Hehe… when mummy suddenly came and asked me to write an article for her office magazine, the first thing I did was to google to check if I could find something good there. Last time I was asked for something like this, I quietly whacked an article written by a CMRIT lecturer in our annual magazine and handed it over as my piece of work. And as luck would have it, it turned out to be a hit. (God only knows where that lecturer actually whacked it from. Hehe). After some hardcore hitting the net, could not find anything worthy. That’s when this topic struck to mind. Something that might make an impact with the audience and probably hit them hard because this is what is reality. And all of us realized it a little too late. No point talking about past now. Lets wait and watch how well its accepted by the audience. And if possible might come up with something meaningful for next years edition too.

- Sandy the Engineer