Do you know your challenges? - Blog post 1


Even before you answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the question that I had asked ‘Are you ready to face life’s tough challenges?’, do you even realize the kind of challenges you are going to face?

You will never feel accomplished if you do not face challenges in life and triumph over them. Your attitude towards challenges matters the most that either makes you or breaks you.

Soon after your graduation, depending upon your purpose/goals in life you are likely to face many challenges. Let me start by helping you identify few of those challenges based on some of the common goals a student has.

Goal 1 - Move abroad for higher education

My purpose in engineering days was to move abroad for higher studies and settle abroad. I dreamed to make it really big in a foreign land. Although my purpose was very clear, I did not know how to achieve it and what to expect. There was no one to guide me. I had to blindly trust what one of the study abroad consultants had to offer.

I come from a humble middle class family. My father is not filthy rich.  My father was then a senior scientist working for one of the Defence Laboratories in Hyderabad (now retired). For a family like ours, dreams of studying abroad was too much of a BIG ask. However, my father decided to press ahead and turn my dreams into reality.

We approached a study abroad consultancy where everything came with a price. It was only after had I paid the fee and signed up to the firm, that they would talked to us. Following the conversation with the consultant, I chose United Kingdom as my destination. I was offered a list of universities under the budget my father could afford. The consultant made my dreams seem very effortless. To summarize the lengthy conversation - pay the consultancy fees, have your visa stamped, earn part-time while you study in the UK, get a job post-graduation and start earning handsome salary in sterling pounds £££.

I went ahead, selected the university, chose my course and paid the fees.

I landed in UK.

Did I achieve my dreams? Was it really effortless?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Do you know your challenges? - Blog post 5

If you have been reading my blog posts from the beginning you will have noticed that I am writing a series of blog to help students identify the challenges based on the purposes/goals they may have in life. The posts also include my personal experiences. Today I am here to focus on challenges of another goal. Goal 2 - Get hired by a multi-national company. Most of the students prefer to work soon after graduating. In my very first blog I mentioned that there are nearly 1.9 million engineers graduating every year across India. Along with these students are arts and science/business management students who graduate every year. I am sure you can imagine the competition you are/will be facing. One of the many reasons why I moved abroad was because I did not find myself competent enough to face the huge competition in India. Where ever I went, I would find my friends, cousins, father’s colleagues’ sons/daughters being placed in multi-national companies. They would look dow
Read more

What are the reasons for your failure in academics?

Have you as students ever analyzed the reasons for your failure in academics? There are few common reasons why students fail in their exams. 1st Reason  - Your choice of specialization course at the time of college admission was right but now you are not sure about your choice. You are thinking you could have chosen another field. Therefore, you are losing interest in the subjects being taught and thus losing focus. 2nd Reason  - You are already worried about your future e.g. job etc. and have already made an assumption that you are not going to find a suitable job after graduation. This is stressing you and therefore you are losing focus on your studies. It is your fear of failure and lack of confidence. 3rd Reason  - You are not getting proper care and attention from your staff members at college. Therefore, you are failing in your exams. Also, you are not approaching your staff members when in doubt because you are shy. 4th Reason  - You are lazy. You are takin
Read more

Do you know your challenges? - Blog Post 3

Unless your parents can provide for your monthly expenses till you have graduated and have found a professional job, you require a part time job to survive abroad. Finding a part time job is a challenge in itself. Finding a job that you can adjust to is another. In UK, no job is considered menial. Whether you are a bus driver, whether you are a waiter/waitress, whether you are on the streets distributing leaflets - you are treated equal. Unfortunately, most of the students do not have the above mentality. Your life will become easy and less disappointing if you are ready to adapt yourself and can commit to such part time jobs. After all it is only going to be a temporary job. Being on a student visa, I was allowed to work 20 hours a week. I found my first part time job through a friend of mine. It was at a dog race stadium where my job was to issue race tickets. I worked 3 days a week for 10-12 hours. The income was just enough for me to manage my expenses. Wh
Read more