The road taken

People are always saying that,

what you study isn't necessarily what you would be doing in the future.

The course you are taking in university might not be your future career.

That each career could be successful.

Yet most professional careers would require you to have professional knowledge.

Without it, you can't even step foot in that career.

While choosing courses after form 6,

we always focus on interests,

choose the course you like,

in actual, different courses offers you a different starting payment.

I had always been in a good class. So it isn't surprising that many of my friends end up studying medicine, pharmacy, engineering, dentistry, pilot, the classic professional courses. In gatherings, attention would naturally be focused on friends studying/working in these fields. They offer interesting hospital stories, airport stories and these future doctors would be arguing with the pharmacists due to their overlapped roles in Malaysia.

These courses all offer high starting salary. Listening to their interesting career stories and high figure salary often left me feeling overwhelmed and uncertain. Food Science and Nutrition will never offer me that kind of starting salary. It is indeed not practical to compare my course with those health care fields, but we were all so similar in the secondary school years, our results didn't vary much. But one decision, a choice of course, had led us to different starting point in the career world.

Had I regretted my choice? I've never had a very stone hard ambition to in a certain career. I know what I don't like. But choosing Food Science and Nutrition in a government university was a decision made based on financial practicality, interest and academic requirement. Mom used to say that wealthy parents could help make the dreams of their children a reality. Many of my friends from STPM had abandoned the courses assigned to them by government university, opting for private uni overseas, pursuing dreamed courses with family financial support. So I'd made a practical and down to earth decision with my course selection. I do like my course. But it is indeed discouraging listening to the starting salary of my seniors'.