Pursue Studies, Why Not?

Salam w.b.t and hello people.

I always get this from many people, "Hey Atiqah, don't you want to pursue studies?", "Don't you want to be a lecturer?", "Are you going to do Master after this?", and other questions but with similar meaning.

Always, my answer will be “NO”. Then, the common following question from them is, “Why?” Saying “NO” is the easiest part in this situation, whereas the “Why” is the most difficult part.

I have a lot of reasons of why I am not doing Master or pursue studies. When I say ‘a lot’, I really mean it. One sentence would not be enough to describe this. It is not that I did not get the opportunity, in fact, I got two chances to pursue studies at higher level.

The first one was Master in Chemical Engineering at UWA, Perth and the second one was Master in Aerospace at Cranfield University, UK. Both were sponsored, and I declined. You guys must think I am an imbecile for rejecting the chances, right?

I have my reasons, people. Therefore, I summarise them here.

Responsibility

Before I completed my undergraduate course, pursuing studies in Master was not my favourite idea, even now. My goal is to make my mother live happily, fulfil all her dreams, and stop working. I am the eldest, and I have huge responsibilities. Therefore, I must work to support my family. I started to apply for Master when most of my friends did so back in mid-2013. At the time, I was not really clear with direction I want to take, so I just go with the flow. My mother was not really happy with the idea and she was worried. In the meantime, I also found that I did not really into this. I want to work, support my family, and gain money as well as experience. For me, experience is much more valuable than the beautiful postgraduate transcript.

Purpose

If you want to pursue in something, in this case, studies, you must have a purpose. Ask yourself first, “Why do you want to further studies?”. When I first start doing my final year project, I read a saying, “Doing thesis is not about just experimenting or whatsoever, it is about contributing to the academic world”.

From my stance, I am not sure how and what can I contribute to the world if I do Master. During my degree, I did my thesis for the sake of finishing my degree course, not more than that. Consequently, I had a hard time and I did not enjoy doing it. I do not want to go similar experience again and waste another year by doing Master without a clear objective, then regret my decision.

Whatever it is, I do not have any objective to do Master. Besides, I don’t know what course to do.

Schlumberger

Yes, even though I have not yet start, I am 150% confident that I will learn and experience more once I am start working with Schlumberger. It will be the mix of theory and hands-on experience in extremely challenging environment.

And, I am really looking forward to it.

Escape

From my personal opinion, people who pursue studies is like fleeing from reality. It sounds negative, huh? But that is my opinion, my personal opinion. I am sorry if it hurts your feeling.

I often heard my friends said, “With Master, will get a fat paycheck compared to Degree”, “Recruiter’s attention will be more on candidates with higher level of education”, “I don’t want to go back to my homeland yet, so it gives me more time to stay oversea”, “Follow my husband/wife finish studies”, and the list goes on.

So far, I heard none said like, “I love doing research and I believe I can contribute to the world through my research”. None.

Thus, I conclude that they are escaping from reality or should I say, delay their time from facing the reality.

You know, reality is harsh.

In reality, having Master will not guarantee you will get much higher pay than degree/diploma graduate, particularly in Malaysia. In addition, with current state of economy, the employers want the best employees but with low pay. Other than that, HR’s attention will not necessarily interested to the person with higher qualification. It is a competition, real life competition with infinity number of rules.

Whatever it is, reality is bitter and difficult. The sooner you face the reality, the better you adapt to it.

Sharing your experiences, not your theories

In small part of myself, I always want to be a person who shares knowledge. You can acknowledge it as a lecturer, teacher, educator, or whatever. The knowledge I would like to share is the knowledge I got from my experience, not the theories from textbooks. In order to share the experiences, I must first experience it myself.

Someone once said to me, in Malaysia, a lot of lecturers at the universities. However, they are lacking industrial experiences. Not all lecturers of course, only some. These people can only teach from textbooks, which is not really helpful as students can also refer to the textbook themselves.

Back in Australia, most of the lectures have knowledge and experiences in the industry, thus the learning process become more fascinating for me. The faculty always invited the guests from well-known companies in related industry to share their expertise. This is so valuable, and indirectly inspired me to become “the guest” one day.

These are my reasons, and everyone has their own reasons. No problem though, as we cannot force people to accept our reasons, as we also sometimes prone to object other’s reasons. Well, maybe in the future, Allah S.W.T destine me to further studies, we never know. But for now, I am comfortable with my decision of not pursuing studies at higher level.

That’s it from me, people. If you have comments, do not hesitant to drop it below. As usual, take care and Salam w.b.t.

P/S – Sir Lokman, from SLB came to my house last Saturday together with his wife and kids. What an unexpected guests :D