A Guest Post By Vyasa Kandasamy founder of CAD Design Centre
I have been asked quite a bit about career choices made as
teens get to the age of 16 onwards, and start thinking of their future
education.
Very often they start making decisions on courses based on
little input they get here and there. Perhaps from a friend or a relative, or a
magazine article. Sometimes parents can't help much, as they are in a totally
different profession altogether. For example mom is a banker, father is an
accountant, and the son wants to get into the field of engineering, even more
specifically electronics engineering. Parents cant do much, as they are not
really knowledgeable about these technical fields.
I am a Mechanical Engineer, by training but I too got into
my field by accident. (I also believe in the Law of Attraction now, but that is
a different topic altogether :) I did my STPM a long time ago, and based on my
results, it was mentioned by some career guide statistics that with my results,
Mechanical Engineering would be the most likely course I would get. Thank god
for that, as was i didn't really want to do medicine (which my parents wanted
me to do :)
As I was applying I realized I had a liking for some form of
mechanical engineering - as I liked to take a part things, and fix and build
stuff when I was growing up. And I had a liking for car engines. So I thought
"Hey, Mechanical Engineering would be perfect for me" and applied for
the course to a few universities, and got into USM (Their engineering campus
was in Tronoh). But throughout the course content, I did not get to even touch
or smell a car engine! In reality, studying life was totally different, full of
Maths, Maths and more Maths, and lots of physics and lots of theory. Hadn't I
done a proper soul searching of why I went into Mechanical Engineering in the
first place, undertaking this course could have been quite a disaster for me.
The fact is this whole process would have been much better,
if I started to get to know about what I want much earlier in life, say 15
onwards. I would have understood the importance of the various subjects that
were thought during the ages of 15 onwards, instead of just studying for it.
It would make it a lot more fun to know something about the career path you are
wishing to undertake later on in life, and it would have given a lot of meaning
to the secondary school subjects.
During discussion with many of my fellow engineering
students, I gathered that many of them got into the various Engineering fields
by virtue of result and not any prior knowledge of the fields. I found this to
be pretty interesting.. and what a waste of talent? What if students really
knew about the various fields much earlier and get pointed to the right fields
much earlier in the lives, and it would save them and their parents much stress
and $$$$!
So here is a series of articles with videos I chose
carefully from the internet, which I felt explains the field very well and in a
simple way. Well, the articles are more technical related fields at this point
of time, so be patient :) Currently, it is about the various Engineering fields
and Architectural fields, I will be
adding more fields in the near future.
The links to the articles are below. Enjoy the articles and
the videos!
Architecture
Vyasa is the founder of Cad Design Centre. They work with
Young ones, Teens and College Students in exploring the above courses early on,
before they decide to step in the fields and incur a big College or University
fee. For the already studying University
Student, the courses will give them clarity and an edge in the University. As
the courses are much need in the workplace, it would definitely give them an
edge during the interview and in the workplace.