Career plan

Year: 2007
Time: Appraisal time
Manager: So Raja, you are a bright and intelligent kid. Obviously you would like to move up the corporate ladder. And me being your line manager, I have an obligation to help you chart a career path. To help me do that, could you tell me what you would like to do in 5 year's time?
raja: I don't know. I have not thought about it.

Year: 2008
Time: Appraisal time
Manager: So have you had a chance to think about your career aspirations in the last one year?
raja: I did think about it and I could not arrive at anything.

Year: 2009
Time: Appraisal time
Manager: Now you have come to a point where you will have to say something about what you want to do with your career
raja: Give me 6 months. I will come up with something

And so now, I have the arduous task of finding out what I would like to do with my career. If I could not have found an answer in 3 years, I do not think I will be able to bring forth something in 6 months. Nevertheless, I will list out the options I have and try to arrive at what is best for me.

My manager can not blame me for not proactively thinking about my career. I infact thought about it quite early in my life. When I was small I wanted to be a farmer. Not just that. I wanted to be the best farmer in the world. So I bought a potted plant and tried to grow it as best as I could. I learnt from my biology classes that plants work in the morning and sleep in the night. But I wanted my plant to work 24 hours. So I bought a carton of RedBull and made it drink every drop of it. The result...

My experimental plant on steroids

I concluded that plant nutrition probably was not my forte. So I turned onto nutrition for human beings. I worked to prepare my own magic portion that will provide me infinite strength and put Obelix to shame. I noticed that whenever I refused to eat or drink something, my parents told me the goodness of that particular food or drink. Some made you grow taller, some made you stronger, some gave you x-ray vision, and the list went on and on. So one afternoon, when my parents were away, I managed to gather all those foods and drinks, mix them in a pot and boil them to a paste. I made small tablets out of them. I had a friend who was anxious to become superman before I did; so he had a go at the tablets before I did. I think it is unnecessary to explain that it didn't go very well.

Superman teeth

One Thursday afternoon, I was watching Forrest Gump when it struck that I could grow shrimps like Forrest. But noone eats shrimps in India. All people eat is rice, chicken and fish fry from road side stalls. That was my big idea. I could grow fish and become a millionaire. My first attempt at fish culture failed as all my fish grew legs and turned to tadpoles and jumped out of my Nutramul pond. If only people ate tadpoles...

A few years later, I realised that my dad worked 5 days a week all round the year. He never had quarterly, half yearly or annual holidays to go fishing or to climb trees or to play hide and seek. I did not want to grow up and work 5 days a week all round the year. So I sat up thinking about jobs that will provide me with quarterly, half yearly and annual holidays. Teacher! I was going to be a teacher. And like usual, the difficulties seeped into my head later. What if the students asked me questions? Could I say ' I will leave that in choice' There was also this moral obligation for the future. If an interviewer asked me what electromagnetic theory is, I would very fluently answer that it is a theory that combines electric theory and magnetic theory in an effort to save writing time in exams. But if I taught that, our future generations will not be able to steal jobs from America.

The answering questions problem arises only if I thought students subjects that had difficult questions. What if I thought easy subjects with easy answers, such as drawing? But showing my drawing exam papers from school is never going to get me a drawing teacher job especially when I have managed to pass only half my drawing tests, and that too just barely.

You are asked questions only if you teach. But if you did something, you can always pretend that you are busy doing stuff and get away with it. Carpentry can be one where I can do stuff such as unnecessarily shaving wood and pretend to be busy! But my carpentry experiences from college are not very encouraging. I once dropped a vernier caliper into a lathe machine and proved that vernier calipers could be sheared up to 0.1 millimeters. I also managed to nail the wooden tray I was making into the working table. If I could nail the tray, I could very well nail my hands and that will not be a pretty sight.

I can't be a computer engineer as I have proved enough number of times that I do not have the IQ to do programming. Nor do I want to be a market researcher. There is no challenge in the job when you have already researched the entire ether-world. I could be an actor if not for the girls that will throng me. I also hate to dance shirt-less on snow capped mountains.

In the last 6 months, I have become a wonderful cook. More and more people have been showering accolades on my cooking skills and less and less people have been running to the bathroom. But cooking is a dangerous sport. I have to live every day of my life with fire, smoke and knives and I end up in tears half the days. So me being a peace-loving person, I think I will have to pass that on.

My cooking has become so awesome that one of my guests didn't even spare the spoon

Moving on to less dangerous sports, I could be a marathoner. It is easier to take this up as I already have a plan to take on the marathon. But I am not going to be the best in the sport. I will blame it on my being a pure bred Dravidian. If I were an Aryan (pure-bred or mixed) I would have been larger than what I am now and larger men have longer legs. So if I took 4 steps to cover 10 feet now, I would do that in 2 steps with my Aryan legs. So all Aryan runners will easily surpass me and I won't be the best in business. There is no point in doing something if you are not the best at it.

Which brings me to where I was 3 years ago. My appraisal is in a year from now. So I can think of it then. I think I could be a procrastinator.