If given a choice of Law and Teaching, which would you pick?
If given the chance to change something in the past, just one thing, what would it be?
Often times, people are caught in a dilemma. However, more often than not, these dilemmas are a result of their own uncertainties and sometimes the misgivings of others too.
Recently, there has been much argument raised in the forum about whether teaching is a dead-end job?
To some, teaching as a career seems to be a turned-off simply because of the long hours one has to put in and the agony of having to face rebellious and uninterested students every other day. The sense of satisfaction, if there is any that is, seems to only be either on Teacher's Day where even the most infamous students in school become angels for just a day or when you finally see your students leave school.
Teaching requires a great deal of passion. It involves your heart and soul. A forgiving heart, a willing heart, a compassionate heart and an endearing heart. A persistent soul, an enduring soul and perhaps an unfortunate soul.
Some of my friends have occasionally asked me whether I regret choosing teaching over law. Some blatantly perceived it as because I have a scholarship in teaching and not in law, plus a chance to go overseas, hence I chose teaching instead. Some thought it was because I didn't make it into law school and hence I chose teaching because I didn't have a keen interest in engineering despite being a double mathematics and double science student when I was in National Junior College.
Let me set the record straight.
I have no regrets about choosing teaching over law. Yes, I was accepted into NUS Law school. Yes, I was even accepted into the law faculty of universities in United Kingdom such as London School of Economics and Political Science. Yes, I dislike engineering because I never did like Physics.
With Law, I knew what I would become. A fresh young lawyer, out there battling out in the courtrooms, ironing out facts from fiction, working long hours and most unfortunately, burnt out within the next 10 to 15 years. The market for law in Singapore is very small and limited. Let's face it, how many criminals do you actually have in Singapore everyday. How many significant corporate cases do our courts in Singapore trial every other day. Put the limited market aside, being burnt out from a career is the last thing I want to see in a career path that I now have a choice to choose. I honestly, do not wish to wake up one day when I am 30 and say to myself, I want a change in my working environment just so because I completely lost interest and passion towards what I am doing as a career.
With Teaching, that is a different story altogether. I see a career path where despite its ups and downs, I see a life rich with vibrancy and opine opportunities. I see a great career path ahead of me not entirely because of my scholarship but because of the passion I have towards teaching.
When I applied for Law at NUS, I went for the written test and interview with feigned enthusiasm as I had already by then accepted my scholarship. I thought why not just try my luck, see how it all goes and see whether I would be accepted into Law or not as since I had already paid my 10 dollars for my application. When the admission letter came, I told myself 'Not Law' but it wrote Law. I smiled to myself and then framed the letter.
To Greg, do not lose hope. A missed opportunity does not equate to an opportunity that will never come. Have faith and more importantly, have confidence!
Dead-end? Teaching? If it were, then I pity you because your education was riddled with teachers who couldn't care less about your performance as a student because they didn't even have the passion towards teaching. My condolenses. Seriously. To you, your education was already in itself dead-end.
---till later---
