Ambition versus Occupation

According to the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, the definition of the word 'ambition' is something that you want to do or achieve very much. I believe that many of us have written an essay entitled 'My Ambition' at least once during our primary school time but instead of writing what we want to do in the future, we ended up writing about the position we want to hold (a.k.a. occupation). Although we were just a child we were still able to choose one particular occupation mainly because we have heard of it or have seen it either in real life or on TV. So, our target after growing up was to get a professional job such as doctor, lawyer, architect, engineer, scientist, teacher, accountant etc. and we were happy about the ambition.

There is a stereotype saying that we must get good results during our school days to secure a place in the university and get a 'good' course so that we can get a promising job after we graduate. However, when we come to the time to choose a course that we want to pursue, we are often guided by people's opinion about that particular course and also our personal instinct that built up since we were young. We had not heard about things like Material Science or Forestry which are not popular, we think that the requirements to get Biotechnology or Environmental Science are quite low and since we got a better results we should aim 'higher', we heard that graduates from Pure Sciences become salesman or even jobless. To be safe, we are willing to compete with thousands of people for the limited seats in popular courses, sometimes not because that it is our dream but because of people's expectation towards us.

An ambition should not be defined as the course you want to study or the job you want to have. It is something you are passionate about and you want to do it to achieve a satisfaction in your life. If you want to teach and unfortunately you didn't get the Education course, you can still be an educator with what you have studied during university time. If you want to reduce people's suffering because of diseases and unfortunately you didn't get the Medicine course, you still can reach the aim by getting into Environmental Health, Biomedicine or even Biotechnology by developing something beneficial to the public. If you want to care for animal's welfare and health and unfortunately you didn't get the Veterinary course, Animal Science and Zoology can lead to the same dream, too! The only difference that you didn't get that particular course but getting something else is, you will not be called a teacher or doctor after you graduate and people may not look up at you with the degree you are holding. However, if you compare the two things, you want to do what you want to do, or do you just want to have the glamour?

It could be weird when people ask you what is your dream and you answer, ''I want to become a chemical engineer.''. And when they ask you for the reason, you couldn't answer it properly because you do not exactly know what a chemical engineer do. Being someone should not be an ambition, it should be what you want to do so that you can benefit yourself and the society in the future. Think wisely before you make the decision. Cheers!



[Disclaimer: This article serves as an advice for students when choosing the path they want to go in the future. I have no intention to offend anyone. Holding on to an ambition as we live is a motivation for us to contribute more to the society. By the way, congratulation for those who are one step closer to their dreams.]