I was pointed to this forum by a small article in The Sunday Times.

The point they are trying to make is; what is the use of studying, if it’s just going to be a paper chase. I for one totally agree.

How many people do you know, your friends, your colleagues, your cousins, who are studying something (at undergraduate level or higer) which they are not interested in? When I realised that this, I was totally surprised. Rather, I realised that only a few strive to study and do things that they really like to do.

I believe there are there are three reasons for this, money, family and society.

Money. Certain professions are supposed to earn a lot of money and certain areas are supposed to have better opportunities, when it comes to jobs. So people study that so that they will get a job easily and earn a lot in that job.

Nevermind the fact that they would be bored to death at your job, and that you would not be happy for most of your working life. Furthermore, I do not believe that certain professions are better off than other. I am sure that if you are good at what u do, really good, then people are willing to pay you money to do anything. And I mean absolutely anything. Like drawing sheep!

Family. I would say more prominent in Asia, than other places. Parents often force childern to study what they think is good for the children. I would not like to go into the whole, “Do parents know children better than the children themselves?”. But I knew quite a few people in such situations. They might be doing well, but they are not totally satisfied.

I think this is also related to the 3rd reason, since many times parents’ actions are affected by the society.

Society. Again, I would say a more prominent Asian thing. Society sees certain professions as ‘better’ than other. I see this everywhere, to a certain extent in my parents as well. I always get annoyed when people ask whether a budding suitor for a girl is either, a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer? Just watch some old _marathi/hindi _movies and you will know what I mean. Surprisingly, this happens in reality all too often.

I don’t know why the society has this idea, but its surely not logical. You can see so many professionals who are doing well and yet are not in any of these ‘better’ areas of work. Furthermore, they are a really enjoying themselves.

So are you really interested in what you are studying?