In India it is a great problem to choose a profession best suited to one. In America there is a National Intelligence Test Bureau where everybody’s intelligence is tested. This test is carried on a mass scale. It is then quite easy for you to select the career that will suit you the most. The system will naturally save our national energy and our health. It will also help in overhauling our present educational system wh8ch is very defective.
When we look around, we see how our schools, colleges and universities are turning out innumerable young persons. They are not fit for any other job except those of clerks. We have to call these institutions as clerk-manufacturing factories. They do produce lawyers, doctors, engineers etc but ‘clerical line’, has the lion’s share on that side.
There are many factors which should determine the choice of a profession. The first and the foremost is a young man’s taste and aptitude. One who is made to follow a profession for which he has taste or liking is not likely to find himself a misfit therein. He will not be a square peg in a round hole, as the expression goes. One who has a taste for music is likely to shape well as a musician rather than as a lawyer. Rabindranath Tagore had a taste for poetry. If instead of allowing him to follow that line, he was put into some other profession, the result would have been disastrous both for himself and for the world. So aptitude is a great consideration.
Another determining factor is talent. A meritorious young man may go in for a learned profession. But there again a careful choice is to be made. For instance, if he has an argumentative brain and the gift of the gab, but no head for mathematics, he is more likely to make a successful lawyer than an engineer.
A third consideration is sufficiency or otherwise of financial resources of a young man’s family. He may have the aptitude for a particular profession, he may have the talents for it; but if his father or guardian cannot afford to pay for his education or training in that line, it is useless for him to think of joining that profession.
The competition to be faced in a particular profession has also to be taken into account in making a choice. Some professions are already overcrowded and one should try to avoid them unless there are special circumstances, which may help one’s mark in it.
After choosing a profession, there are two fundamentals for its success. First, we must be devoted to our work . We must be able to learn its secrets in the spirit of a devotee. Let us take to any vocation of life. We must work with all the zeal and enthusiasm to make our work a grand success. Secondly, we must be ready to stick to it and struggle for it. A rolling stone gathers no moss and so a drifting worker is rarely a success. The choice should be made after careful consideration, but once it is made, we must stick to it.
The choice of a profession is a matter of vital importance to every man. A right choice may make his future career bright while a wrong choice may mar it forever. It is, however, not possible for an inexperienced young man to assess his abilities for a profession or his chances of success in it. It is, therefore, the duty of his guadians and teachers to help him to make the choice.
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