30.1.08

An insight?

Had this idea in mind for some days already, just couldn't find the time to write about it.

People sometimes ask themselves the question of why are they studying so hard for. Especially in Singapore, where meritocracy is the order of the day, and organizations (who are recruiting staff for their positions) are often looking for candidates with (in their own words):

"Excellent academic qualifications..."

"A good degree in any discipline..."

"A Second Upper Honors degree or GPA of 4.0..."

"A degree, magna cum laude, from a respectable university..."

Get enough of such emails and you will soon see the amount of emphasis society is placing on academic qualifications. And, sadly, I'm pressing the "Delete" button far too often.

Are qualifications that important, to the extent it precedes anything else? It seems to be, though nowadays organizations factor in other aspects, such as CCAs, communication skills, teamplay...

But academic qualifications remain top in their criteria.

Just to share, I came across an article on the factors that determine if one is going to be successful in life. A study shows very little correlation between a person's IQ (or academic qualifications, I forgot) and whether he is successful later in life (I suppose this is determined by some benchmarks, such as annual income or net worth).

In fact, the top few earners (the so-called successful people by Singapore's yardstick) were seriously lacking in the qualifications that we adamantly pursue.

The study attributed several other factors to determine if a person is successful: in general, a successful person is forward-looking, takes calculated risks, and optimistic (these are internal conditions). External conditions such as the environment, the people you meet, luck - are just some of the "uncontrollable" factors that play just as important a role as the internal conditions.

Now, there are people who are both smart and successful; ample examples abound.

Notwithstanding the robustness of the methodology or generalizability of the results, taking the results prima facie I speculate that some of my friends are studying so hard now is because they are trying to attain as much as possible the "internal conditions" vital to success. At least, these are partially controllable, unlike the external conditions.

At least now, I can partly understand why some of my schoolmates are going the extra mile to get that A.

Nevertheless, the traits of being optimistic and forward-looking are just as internal. These are more easily attainable in that one only needs to change his mindset and attitude. Easier said than done though, it's a major challenge since we are pretty much conditioned that having qualifications is equated to success.

The point of this entry?

Friends who currently have the qualifications: perhaps it is time to look into developing these traits, if you have not already done so. It's much easier since you have the grades already.

Friends who currently do not have the qualifications: just something to boost your confidence. It's easy to lose sight of your uniqueness in this messy sea of competition for grades, but I'm sure you can just develop those traits easily as well.

I fall into the latter category. As for those traits, I'm developing as many of them as possible. It probably won't make me extremely successful as I would like myself to be, but at least I know that having them makes my life and relationship with others more smooth-sailing.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home