Chores
I don’t like them. But I have no choice. I am stomped with them.
From coordinating the hanging of various framed puzzles, to cleaning giant pots and dishes, to stuffing ang pau packets. I have a lot of chores to do. Gone are my thoughts of playing some game. But gone are my guilt, as well.
Other things in my list of chores include a house-wide clean up and baking cookies. Though I may be lacking in the cleaning department, my ‘housewife’ing experiences in KL taught me some things. Although my perception of ‘clean’ may still be messy to some people. But you learn, you know.
On the topic of learning, I’d like to point out one thing: people who are not business-inclined should just not do business.
People take for granted that ‘anybody can do business’. That was why I was frowned upon a lot during high school when I decided to pursue business management in college. They say ‘anyone’ can do business, so why learn a course that’s so general? Man how they are wrong.
There are more things that go into doing a business than to count your profit and loss. You have to have a business plan, which includes all the nitty gritty stuff that would entail your target market, your projected income, how is your product/services going to serve the market, who are your competitions, how is your location relevant to your business and target market, and even (if applicable) your exit strategies, among other things. And no, I didn’t learn all that from my dad. Contrary to popular beliefs, my dad taught me very little about the technical side of business. He taught me the fundamentals, and some principles to stick by. And that’s it. He doesn’t want me to dive into a business without fully learning about it first.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not here to teach you business and pretend like I know everything. I just want to caution people not to take doing business lightly. The money-making prospects of doing a business could blind the greedy that it’s ‘easy’. Even if it was just an MLM.
If it was that easy why would I even be studying right now??
But one thing I could share with you is to keep on learning. Perhaps because I have been put in situations where I needed to mentally prepare myself and learn very quickly that the prospects of it doesn’t daunt me as much. But I could not impose any more on how important it is to keep on learning. After you graduate, you might not even land a job that’s relevant to your degree, but if you remain flexible and learn on the job, you can still be succesful. Don’t sigh and give up, but channel that energy to learn.
Employers like hardworking people. People who could adapt.
For most of you out there this is the first or second year of your degree. For myself its second. And already I hear people sighing and panicking that they might even be in the wrong course for them. They may have the capacity for it, but their heart’s not in it. Mostly its because their parents or family who pushed them into these courses. When they come to me, the first thing I asked them was: "If not this course, what?"
Most of the time, the answer I received is: "I don’t know."
My first instinct was to choke them to death, like someone possessed.
But I refrained, regardless of how tempting it may be. But to compensate, I gave them this instead:
"W! T! F! YOU ARE ALREADY 20 YEARS OLD AND WELL INTO YOUR UNIVERSITY EDUCATION BUT YOU STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU WANT!? WHAT YOU WANNA WAIT FOR SOMEONE TO HAND IT OVER TO YOU ON A GOLDEN PLATE ONLY THEN WILL YOU DECIDE THAT ITS WHAT YOU WANT IS IT?!"
Or something along that line, only more sinister.
After I’ve had my rants (which these people deserve, of course) I told them what I think. I can’t offer them golden advices like Cekgu Sabri but the least I could do is tell them what I think.
What I think is that, if they can’t or don’t want, to change course, they should just stick to what they are currently doing. I don’t want some mad parent calling me up in the middle of the night saying I’ve poisoned the mind of his child into quitting uni and joining some dodgy MLM at some dodgy convention.
Anyway, from here they have two options. 1) slowly learn about their chosen course. Say, they are in engineering, but would rather do business instead, so while they are studying engineering for the degree, they could read up on business on the side. It’s really cool to learn things on your own. I did the same after high school. I read a lot on business before I entered university. So by then I was all ready for it. The reason for doing this is two-fold: one, they could sharpen their knowledge on their selected areas of interest, and two, they could decide if, after a while of reading, they are still interested in that subject or not. People’s interest can change, after all, so it’s important to be flexible.
2) For those who are stuck in the wrong course but don’t know where their real interest lies, they would need to do some soul-searching. Be forewarned that this could take years. Stick to the same advice: be flexible and don’t be afraid to try new things. Read on things that intrigue you. If you like arts, try doing some art projects, like drawing or something. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it’s what you like, so screw the critics.
My ’soul-searching’ took about a year. It started when I called up my friend in my panic that I may end up in the wrong class and would be completely clueless about my future. At that time I was told that civil engineers have better work prospects than business graduates so I was scared and told myself I needed to be a civil engineer (can you imagine that? ME? An engineer? Hah!).
But anyway, luckily for me, I found my interest. However, some people might not even find it until very late in life. Honestly, just do what your gut tells you. Do what you want. Not what other people want you to do.
And most importantly, don’t stop learning. You might be in the wrong course, and then told to do something that’s not even relevant to you, like say, accounting (if you course is not accounting and you don’t like it). If there’s no way out of it, just shut up and put up. There’s no harm in learning to do accounting even if you won’t end up a wizard of it. After all, it’s better to be a jack of all trades, but master of none, than be a jack of no trade at all.
And words cannot describe how much I hate people who say ‘I don’t know’ constantly. I am tempted to tell these people they are just wasting oxygen.
I’ve said a lot of stuff, but I’m no sage. I am still learning as well. You learn all your life. Formal or informal things, learning is learning. In my college I learned a very important lesson in life, something that no other univeristy (except mine) teach. It is called Idiot management. No university offers courses in dealing with idiots so I am lucky to be having this education for free.
My motto is "people are unreliable. people can be mafan. Don’t rely on people". It taught me to be more dependable so I won’t exasperate the people around me. I like to be the one people turn to for their troubles, but I don’t want that person to hang on to me like some excess baggage.
Be dependant damnit!
Ta’ra.
