“What’s next?”. This is the question that is bothering all of us right now in the context of the ongoing pandemic. However, pandemic or not, every year, the same question steals the peaceful night’s sleep of many young adults and their parents, albeit in a different context. As soon as they appear for their X or XII board exam, this question, and many other variations of it, start haunting them. Arts, science, or commerce? Computer or accountancy? General stream or engineering? Engineering or medical? Computer Science or Electronics? It appears that our life depends on the answers of these questions. Lo and behold. Trust me, it does not.

I will be wrong if I claim that what stream you chose after your board exam has no significance in your life. It surely has. However, nothing is further from the truth that your life path gets set in stone by the stream/subject you chose at the age of 15-17 years. No, it does not. Rather, the life ahead waits for us with hundreds of surprises and possibilities. Let me explain this thought with some examples.

First, we should recognise that the industry and the job market are dynamic. Societal needs, and solution of those needs, both change very rapidly through disruptive innovations. What seems obvious today, was not there even five years ago. In general, from the Xth board exam, a person takes about fifteen years to get truly established. Clearly, technology will have a sea change in that duration. For example, when I was fifteen, I did not know what email was. After fifteen years, during my PhD, every communication was email based. After twelve more years from then, most of our communications today are app based. Not just the communication, think of any field, be it entertainment or commerce, medicine or manufacturing, life has seen a sea change. Twelve years ago, online transactions for me was limited to booking a railway ticket via IRCTC website after multiple attempts. Three year prior to that, I had to visit a booking counter to buy a railway ticket. If the technology is changing so fast, can job requirements be static? It is not. As a result, it is next to impossible to prepare oneself for the demand that will arise ten to fifteen years in the future. Hence, ability to adapt is more important than choosing the “right” branch. Learning to learn efficiently is another key to success. Depth is essential, but breadth is equally important. One needs to learn how to connect the dots, how to apply solutions learnt from one field to the other. That is the key to survive and thrive in this ever-changing world.

In addition, I believe that at that tender age of mid-teen, we have little understanding of what we really want, what we are genuinely good at. I am not talking about people like Sachin Tendulkar here, The God, but the regular mortals like us. At that age, we do not know what we are good at, because we lack exposure. A person may think that (s)he is good at math, but that idea is based on only high school mathematics. Higher studies in mathematics is vastly different from our high school mathematics. The opposite is also true. I know people who did not like biology or chemistry at high schools because they perceived those subjects as something which demands only memorization and offers no logic. However, later they became experts in these subjects.

Why do such changes happen? They happen because we develop our impression of a subject during our high school based on how that subject was taught and unfortunately we do not have many teachers in our schools who can deliver the true essence of a subject to the students and inspire them. As a result, we often end up having a distorted image of a subject. In addition, very few of us have the contacts to know the reality of a subject in advance levels. For example, when I appeared for my Xth exam, I loved language, and I was thinking of taking Bengali for my further studies. Now when I look back, I realize that I did not have any clue what is taught in an M.A. course in Bengali. So, decisions taken at that stage are often ill-informed. Consequently, in later part of life when people get different exposures, they find their “true call”, and eventually change the stream that they once picked after great deliberation.

If you want to know such examples who changed their path, I’ll urge you to google, or read people’s biographies. You will be surprised to see that contrary to the popular belief, many successful people were never “focused” from the beginning. Rather they changed their path continuously till they found their goal.

Then how should one decide their branch or their stream of study after Xth or XIIth? My suggestion would be to take one step at a time. Do not get bothered about the future scope. Here, I would like to share what Prof. Ashutosh Shamra, Secretary DST and an eminent scientist, once said in an interview. He said that parents are not really bothered about the ‘scope of a field’ i.e. how many jobs will be there after five years. What they really want to know if their son/daughter will get a job or not. Prof. Sharma narrated his answer with a smile, “Your kid will need only one job and that will be there in this field”, implying if someone is good enough, (s)he can get a job in any field. Additionally, many of you, my young friends who are reading this article, will be entrepreneurs. You will create jobs. You will not seek jobs. You will make your own path.

My suggestion to all my young friends would be “Be Passionate” and “Be flexible”. Love what you are doing but never stop learning something new. That way, you will never miss a call coming from your heart. I followed this simple mantra so far and have no regret. I’ll come back to you, if I ever change my viewpoint in future.

The writer is an associate professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT Bombay. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT Kanpur in 2010. Though he is a chemical engineer by training, his research area includes stem cell biology, biomechanics, and microfluidics. In addition to his research, he is interested in science communication, and science outreach to masses. He is fond of writing and painting.