random musing
Back from Thailand with a deflated wallet. Tailored a few shirts there and ate my way to poverty over there. Really appreciate the nice distinctive white lines on Singapore roads after spending about a week in Thailand where the vehicle owners make the traffic rules. Not much photos to offer due to the extremely shy nature of my fellow travelers. Will post any interesting photos up in due course.
Checked my examination results. The overall grading was above my expectation when I first stepped into NTU. However, from the tone of my language thus far, the euphoria had waned and a bigger realization had set in – So what? So what if I had gotten a first class? People with similar grades or lower than mine are going places far better than I am going to. (I surmised that a disclaimer is required here: I do not dislike auditing work. Not at all.) Out of the people whom I reckoned received first class, I can only recall one person going to an auditing firm while the rest will be going to banks and big name institutions and that person is going to an auditing firm because she had a bond with the company (ie. no choice). This means that none of my peers who received the same grade as me is going to an audit firm voluntarily. Just make me kind of depressed. As usual, the only grouse that I have is that the starting salary of an audit job is way too low. In a year’s time, most of my friends will have a net worth double of mine (assuming everybody’s net worth is 0 at graduation). This brings me to my original question: So what? I have a paper qualification advantage over some of my peers but this is translated to nothing in real life.
While I appreciate very very much the congratulations for my academic achievements, I felt that it was a hollow victory. I do not need a first class to get into an auditing job: a bare minimum of pass will do the job nicely. A question of over-kill? A purely rhetoric question.
By being in a job that “waste my talent/grade” (quoted), I do not know whether this initial handicap is a good thing or not but it really fired me up. I know I have to work doubly hard to overcome the perceived handicap, to catch up with my peers who gained entrance into mega name companies the moment they graduate and to catch up with my peers who had at least a 3 to 4 years head start in terms of absolute monthly salary and perhaps 5 to 6 years in terms of accumulative salary.
This race is unlike what I have gone through or witnessed over my 24 years of existence. But chase I will, for in a hunt, the thrill is in the pursuit. The target that I am running to is an ever-moving one. I might not win the race, or the race might even be left uncompleted but I do hope I can find similarly-minded friends and colleagues who will run along with me along the way.
Checked my examination results. The overall grading was above my expectation when I first stepped into NTU. However, from the tone of my language thus far, the euphoria had waned and a bigger realization had set in – So what? So what if I had gotten a first class? People with similar grades or lower than mine are going places far better than I am going to. (I surmised that a disclaimer is required here: I do not dislike auditing work. Not at all.) Out of the people whom I reckoned received first class, I can only recall one person going to an auditing firm while the rest will be going to banks and big name institutions and that person is going to an auditing firm because she had a bond with the company (ie. no choice). This means that none of my peers who received the same grade as me is going to an audit firm voluntarily. Just make me kind of depressed. As usual, the only grouse that I have is that the starting salary of an audit job is way too low. In a year’s time, most of my friends will have a net worth double of mine (assuming everybody’s net worth is 0 at graduation). This brings me to my original question: So what? I have a paper qualification advantage over some of my peers but this is translated to nothing in real life.
While I appreciate very very much the congratulations for my academic achievements, I felt that it was a hollow victory. I do not need a first class to get into an auditing job: a bare minimum of pass will do the job nicely. A question of over-kill? A purely rhetoric question.
By being in a job that “waste my talent/grade” (quoted), I do not know whether this initial handicap is a good thing or not but it really fired me up. I know I have to work doubly hard to overcome the perceived handicap, to catch up with my peers who gained entrance into mega name companies the moment they graduate and to catch up with my peers who had at least a 3 to 4 years head start in terms of absolute monthly salary and perhaps 5 to 6 years in terms of accumulative salary.
This race is unlike what I have gone through or witnessed over my 24 years of existence. But chase I will, for in a hunt, the thrill is in the pursuit. The target that I am running to is an ever-moving one. I might not win the race, or the race might even be left uncompleted but I do hope I can find similarly-minded friends and colleagues who will run along with me along the way.
1 Comments:
At 11:10 PM,
Kaching said…
Academic excellence is a key to open any doors that one wants. Not all things are good behind each door. Given our knowledge at any point in time, we have to make a decision to open one of the door and keep walking. There’s no right nor wrong path, but how we position ourselves along the way, keeping our goal in mind. The target gets clearer as one understands oneself better, after a few knocks here and there.
I know of a person (X) who is a first class honor student in Accountancy and who went on to auditing. X was auditing a large conglomerate. Given his interest in corporate finance and the opportunity present then, he positioned/ marketed himself within the large conglomerate and finally became their M&A, corporate structuring etc expert.
Positioning. Strategy.
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