Adonis Diaries

Article #27, November 14, 2005

 “Do you know what your folk’s jobs are?”

I know that students ask themselves for each course they are taking: “How can this course enhance my job prospects?” 

The bottom line is most of the time the perennial question: “Would I be able to secure a job as soon as I graduate?” 

The next worry is:  “Does the curriculum prepare me to acquire the requisite knowledge, practice and discipline that employers expect me to have?” ; “Would I be able to apply somehow this accumulation of formal learning or, as I am being told, most of these required courses would turn out to be a baggage of dead weight?”

I believe freshman students should investigate the jobs of their folks prior to academic orientation and as an assignment before deciding on a major.

A few of the questions they will have to figure out are:

1. Do you know what your father or mother do for a living? 

2. How about starting by asking your folks to be specific on how they earn their living, for example how is a typical day at work and what different tasks they usually perform to have a job done?

3. Do they have to actually write a report personally and in what language?

4. Do they have assistance? Do they do have a secretary assigned to fill out standard report forms, field queries from clients, take appointments and all the time consuming tasks that leave your folks to cater whatever is left to be done?

5. Did you ever ask your folks whether their current jobs match their University discipline?

6. Whether they were required to attend a few continuing education courses and seminars before they were promoted?

7. Are they satisfied with their jobs?

8. Would they have chosen a different discipline if they had better orientation and had the opportunity and the availability to decide on their own?

9. What do they think were the three main criteria that differentiated them from the other colleagues who were not as successful?

10. What major obstacles prevented them from going on their own after acquiring experience?

11. Would they encourage you to have your own business after acquiring some experience?

There is an Arabic saying: “You either work for yourself or you work for somebody else; either you have patience with your living earning job or you need to endure the patience for being bankrupt”. 

What is your alternative? 

What job would make you wake up fresh and ready for the rest of your working life and thus make you a successful person?