Tuesday 28 June 2011

Transitions . . .



There comes to a point where we have to choose where to go after high school - to further studies that is.

I did my homework of course. About 3 months prior to the public exam I was sitting for that year, I already did researches. The problem was and still is, I have absolutely no idea what I want to do. I just couldn't make up my mind. 

The first one was taking up law. I was just interested back then. Maybe because I was inspired by MM Lee Kuan Yew after I read The Singapore Story : Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew? He was a law student together with his late wife, Kwa Geok Choo. They both not only graduated with first class honors but they graduated much earlier than their peers. He indeed is worth admiration.



So I looked around and eventually found this law student at a forum that has just graduated. He told me he took up that course because he's really passionate about it and his girlfriend also took law (this IMO should be the real reason). Some did it because of passion, some for money (who hates money?) ,some for authority and even some because their parents want them to be lawyers.

 - - -

You just got to agree that some parents nowadays still want their children to be either lawyers, doctors and bankers(WtfIsTis?) due to the fact that those professions make good money and it'll make them have this line to boast - "My child very successful one. The eldest and second child lawyers leh. Then hor,my youngest one now studying medic. Future doctor leh. Next time you people fall sick can come find me. Can call my gina give discount one." . They will go  "waaaseeeeeeeh!" ,then some aunties will start their gossips "Eh you know that, Aunty X ar. The children all very capable le. Must be good to her, next time kena sue or fall sick can have her to help one. My 2 daughters also not bad la "

'Soooo young but already so creative . .'

Tsk tsk tsk..Typical Malaysians. 

- - -

   So all lawyers make good money?


   Sorry to disappoint you. . "NO" .

  Lawyers can make lots of money but do bear in         mind that like any other profession, only those who are top of the field make a huge sum. The first few months after graduating from law school will be the chambering period. During this period, fresh graduates will be very busy. This friend of mine happens to work in KL during his chambering period, most of his work was just translating documents and fetching documents here and there. KL's traffic makes it even better. There are still other things to do such as doing researches for lawyers etc, . As simple as it sounds, in reality it isn't. The researches are mostly on vague subjects such as 'Can .. be the bench mark of ..' . They have to keep track of recent court cases, precedents and others of such. Not to mention the long hours they work. My friend starts around 9am and finishes around 11pm. He works 6 days weekly cause there'll surely be the leftovers to be done during the weekends. Before I forget, his pay is really low initially and don't even think of hitting 5 digits monthly until you have sufficient working experience. Then, they have their professional conduct / own rules of ethics. Do something funny or get sabotaged, get disbarred and you can really cry as hard as you can cause that degree officially turned into a piece of paper that's of no use at all.

For those not intending to work overseas, what my friend advised was, don't let your hopes too high unless you graduate from top Universities in their country.

- - -

A must read!


Lawyers guide to make a lot of money 101: 

#1 Receive starbucks (high class a bit larh) money




#2 Attend social events, get to know some rich husbands and convince them to have an affair. Then, go to their wife and blow their covers and say that you're willing to help. Then leech from the antimony if you win the case for them. If not, kill them with your high consultation fees. This combo also can be performed : antimony + high consultation fees. Or if you get lucky, you bump into a person who need legal advice. Just help them through (start timer), then pos laju your bill to them.

#3 Always remind your boss how Awesome they are (in hokkien it's called hu-lam-pah) to the point they upgrade you to brudder/sista and offers you partnership where the relationship will be quite similar Jack and Rose's from Titanic.

Things, however can go wrong sometimes.


There, as easy as 1, 2 and 3.

Do leave comments me if you have more creative ideas. (:

- - - 

So my second choice was bio-medical science. So I read online, how they are able to hatch tadpoles with 2 heads and manipulate with genes. Extract here then insert here and there. Believe it or not, some vegetables has human genes thanks to Science and Technology once again. Then again I stumbled upon their long working hours. This one is worse because like a doctor, experiments are carried out round the clock and you'd better wake up when the timer rings or else you'd have to repeat the whole thing and wait for the results (some may take up to months). By the way, I hope that they are not that picky on where they sleep cause they occasionally might have to spend the night in the lab whilst waiting for the results. Then, before you say 'Yes' I can do that and take the course. Please be reminded that post-doctoral positions are really hard to aim for and most of these fresh graduates are jobless. Most of them ended up being lecturers after getting their Masters. If you're that lucky to get the position, don't think that you'll be doing all those lab tests. You'll be kept busy cleaning and sterilizing the equipments at first until you earn your PhD. . They pay isn't that attractive I'd say. Job opportunities are available in Malaysia. I won't be giving figures here. Just ask around about their salaries and you'll understand why I didn't take this course apart from the reason I used to occasionally fail both my Biology and Chemistry. 

B for Biology and C for Chemistry .. FML ...


Next up, psychology and psychiatry. Yes, there is a difference. I didn't about the difference until later when I talked to an educational counsellor. I'd admit that a psychiatrist does have a decent salary. So I looked in a bit further. How do you qualify as a psychiatrist? There I hit the stop sign. You need to qualify as a doctor first. You'll need a minimum 6 years for that before you specialize and become a psychiatrist. A psychologist doesn't require you to go through Medic School but there's a huge gap salary difference between both professions that I couldn't accept and I'll clearly only end up being the corpse in medic school having said of my 'excellent' results for my science subjects.
  

Next, banking and finance. I've heard the tales from Wall Street of those earning millions even before they hit their 30's. Those'll be the cream of the crop. Competition is really stiff in that field and note that the market never sleeps. You'll have adjust your biological clock taking up this profession and be really resourceful, analytical and have a good 6th sense (intuition). Many would say that the degree is irrelevant and you'll end up selling financial products (which only require specific training) . Long story short, you'll even have to compete with those without degrees and they might just be better than you. Come to worst, you might be bad at this game. There's a high chance that you'll make more working in McDonald's outlet..


Then comes Actuarial Science. It's not related to science, it is however highly relevant to Probabilities, Statistics , Economics and Computing. Actuaries generally work in insurance companies. These are the people who calculate the likelihood of an occurrence of an event and design insurance plans. Hmm, what does the net have to say about this? High dropout rate, very difficult course (some says that it's harder than medic and law) but if you make it, you'll be rewarded well. How well you may ask, during internships, you can make a few thousands  £ monthly. Yes, pounds! One of the good universities to study this course will be University of Waterloo,Ontario , Canada. Microsoft in fact agreed to employ a portion of their students every year. Those that passed just about one or two professional papers out can expect to have salaries around 3k+ USD with 2 - 3 years working experience but this is still based on individual performance. I've also heard of a Qualified Actuary earning MYR 2k per hour. My biggest mistake was fantasizing about what I haven't achieved. Counting chickens before they hatch. So I read the requirements and how difficult they describe the professional exams are. STPM top achievers(we are talking bout students with CGPA4.0) dropping out and I soon found out about the ideal subjects combination, namely Further Maths. , Maths. , Economics and Physics.

Instead of enrolling into the said course, I decided to test the waters first by taking up a general pre-university programme with the said subject combination. I had to choose between STPM and Cambridge A-Levels (CAL). After much considerations, I told my parents I wanted to do CAL commencing January but they wanted me to join the March intake because I can save the trouble of boarding a flight back during CNY and could learn driving with the time. I didn't want to take up STPM because it only starts much later. All I wanted then was a head start (which in the end saved me no time) and to study. There, after much convincing, I was enrolled into CAL January Intake at KL taking up the suggested subject combination.

The first day was a breeze. From there onwards, I fully comprehend why people say that CAL is difficult (I bullshit you not about the workload) . I struggled with my studies and I decided on the 2nd week, it's time to drop Furthur Maths. . I wasn't the only one that dropped that subject (this saved my face a bit, a bit :P). There were around 5 of us if I hadn't recall wrongly. After I dropped F. Maths, I could finally catch my breath. Then I thought of my aims of getting into Waterloo. Doing well for the 3 subjects won't be that  useful if I'm planing to head to top notch universities. So because of that fact/ (So because I was 'kiasu'), I dropped Economics and took up Biology and Chemistry (that was my worst decision to date) after a week without Further Maths. This was because that universities prefer science students. Given two students,one taking science and one art, scoring A* for all their subjects in A levels, the institution is more likely to enroll the science student even if they are applying for commerce courses.

I struggled more with my new subjects combination. I never knew that it was so much harder compared to high school sciences. I struggled until April when I realized there's no point continuing after getting my test papers back. I'll just be wasting time and resources if I don't do anything about it. The only solution at that point of time for me was calling it quits. I applied for Diploma in Business Studies (Accounting) in another uni in the mean while and luckily, I got accepted!

Since I already secured a spot, I withdrew from CAL and now I'm here. Accounting is proving to be quite a challenge as it's a totally new subject for me. Still, I'm holding on..




Just hoping for the best.





Imperfecion.

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