WRONG CAREER CHOICE

THE TRUE CALLING THAT WASN'T

Want to be a creative writer, but pursuing Engineering? Dreamt of becoming journalist, but struck with medicine? History is your calling but forced into family business?

If your situation is similar to the above-mentioned cases, then my friend, you too are suffering from the oh-so-common-but-deadly-in-the-long-term WCC syndrome. If you're wondering what in world is WCC Syndrome, let me tell you that it isn't any medical condition. WCC stands for Wrong Career Choice syndrome, which is a social condition found in almost every third Indian.

Apart from their brilliant performances, the other reason why I absolutely loved Aamir Khan starrer 3 Idiots was its honest portrayal of parent and peer pressure when one makes a career choice in India. We as Indians champion in the race of picking careers in the most primitive of manners. It's no wonder, then, that so many of people around us are dissatisfied with jobs.

The pressure to "be" something starts early in life. Many children move past wanting to be professional athletes, rock stars or astronauts, but then their parents, peers and teachers begin to exert influence- maybe before the young minds even know where their inclinations lie.

Consider the mother who helps persuade her son to become a lawyer, the father who urges his daughter to train to be a doctor or the student who picks a college major nearly at random because it's time to decide one or because it may lead to a job with a high annual package.

We get our degrees, our internships, first job and decent money and before we realize, we're settled in our careers thinking that it worked out fine enough. Only that it didn't. The work doesn't feel like our true calling. We don't find the true contentment in our job, we aren't passionate enough and the job description doesn't mesh with our personality or talents. We continue doing what we're doing only because changing our career line at that point seems out of question and the very thought of starting from scratch seems laughable. And really, who wants to become the specimen of failure in their social circle? No one, for sure.

Thus, there's a doctor who finds his work tedious and overly repetitive. A lawyer who finds no enjoyment in arguing daily in the courtroom at top of his lungs and dealing with paperwork, and a researcher who after years of slogging on one particular area, concludes that there's no room for creativity in his profession.

However, there's a huge difference between questioning your career choice from not being in the mood to work, finding your work difficult or disliking your boss or your work environment. Because, more than often, when one says that he/she hates what they do, they might actually hate who they do it for. In that case one needs to work on improving their relations rather than change their careers.

Unhappiness with your career choice goes to the root of who you are as individual and your sense of social identity. People, who made a wrong career choice, often feel like an imposter, even if they tend to be good at their jobs. They also might be the ones who lose their cool quite easily enough with the work demands and happen to work under stress all the time.

To avoid all this, you just have to pick a career which you actually enjoy doing. It doesn't have to mainstream. Hell, it can be as unusual as the word goes. Just be clear about your interests and passion and take up the option which you think best suites your interests and not your parents' wishes or your bank balance. Make the right choice at the right time. Or be gutsy enough to switch it whenever the realization dawns.

After all, there might not be a true calling, but most probably there's a better calling for many of us.