Why Don't You Be a Lawyer/ Doctor/ Engineer?
I come from two different worlds – my humble village in India, and the metropolitan city of Singapore. As an Indian, something I constantly heard from my parents and parents of friends was to become a lawyer, engineer or doctor. It’s a statement that I have grown to resent, and it’s something that still haunts me to date even though I’ve made it very clear that none of them can happen.
To my parents, who are immigrants who moved to Singapore for a better life and better opportunities for their daughters, becoming a doctor/ lawyer/ engineer meant their dream of providing me with a good life in a first world country was actualized. It assures them that I have a stable career, a name for myself and the promise of a good life. It’s their idea of success. There’s nothing wrong with it – I hate the idea of it, but I can understand and empathize with where it’s coming from.
As immigrants, we traveled back home to India on a regular basis. Sometimes we stayed there for the entirety of a month or almost two because of school holidays and since you can’t spend ALL your time in your relatives’ houses, we went on tours. To see the rest of Tamilnadu. And everywhere we went, there were always kids working. Little boys clearing and wiping down the tables in restaurants after customers ate and left. Little girls who would sell us tart mangoes coated in salt and chili powder through train windows. Little kids who would linger around department stores to do ad hoc jobs like folding clothes. My dad would always point them out to me.
These kids were usually one or two years older than me. Then they became kids of my age. Then they became kids younger than me by two years, five years, ten. My dad would always stop them to ask what they were studying. Some didn’t even go to school at that point – they couldn’t afford to or because their family income required them to work. Most studied and worked. If my dad felt like talking, he would strike up a conversation, ask them what they want to do when they grow up. Some didn’t have an answer. Most wanted to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or something unique to India – a collector (someone who is in charge of the administration of a district, independent of political parties and all that minister stuff). My dad wanted my sister and I to know how fortunate we were to be able to afford an education, dreams and about how there are people who weren’t as fortunate as us. Because he very nearly was one of the kids himself. My dad would probe, ask the kids why they wanted to be what they wanted to be. Some said the job pays well, and their family could use the money. Most said they wanted to help people or serve.
This was an interesting disconnect to me. The truth is, as a doctor/ engineer/ lawyer/ collector, you can earn money, and you can serve people. It’s just that among the circles that my family and friends ran in, becoming a doctor, engineer or lawyer usually qualified as money. It was a status indicator and the pressure was always there to be one. For the cars, the houses and the wealth. Aunties would compete in gatherings about whose kid was doing better because of their choice in further education. Even in the marriage scene, it’s not uncommon for someone who is an engineer to specify that they would only marry a doctor or an engineer. For the kids however, upon probing, themes like respect and helping those who need it came up. Often times these kids were verbally abused, sometimes even physically, to do their job. You always see them being pushed and shoved around. Like they are disposable and like they don’t matter. And seeing the emphasis society gives people like doctors, engineers, lawyers and collectors, those kids saw it as a way to earn respect. In some villages, people still get up and stand as a way of showing respect when a doctor or a lawyer walks past them. The kids talked about helping those in need because they know what it’s like to be someone who needs.
Now, I’m not making a blanket statement here claiming that EVERYONE who had money wanted to pursue one of the professions for the money and didn’t want to serve and that everyone who didn’t have money wanted to do it out of goodwill would donate to charity. It’s just that MOST of the people I personally crossed paths with rationalized their choice of career this way. It made me think.
It’s easy to flippantly say “Your job doesn’t determine your worth” when you’re trying to explain to your parents why you quit your job in research to become a writer. But to those kids, it was a beacon of hope to prove their worth someday. Whether or not these kids actually understood the implications of what they were saying, and whether they eventually followed it through was one thing. But at that time in their life, the logic behind that career choice was impeccable, and one that was actually legitimate.
I’m not calling anyone’s motives for their choice of further education into question here. I’m not pulling a holier than thou here. But in a world where you constantly hear about these careers, and you see how they are perceived as opposed to what they actually mean, and you are treated like a total failure for not pursuing one of them for that perceived reason and choices that are purely yours, you can’t help but wonder where society is headed.
Those kids that I came across have never left my mind. I think about them from time to time – when I was hammering away at my laptop at my 9-5, when I am writing an opinion piece, when I plan my day for tomorrow.
One man’s poison is another man’s cure, right?
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