1. Last year I went to Andaman Islands in my summer vacation.
2. The islands are nearly 2000 miles away from my city.
3. Given the huge amount of distance, the most preferred way to travel to these islands from my city is either train or aircraft.
4. Since the aircraft tickets are really expensive in holiday season due to heightened demand, my parents decided to commute by train.
5. The journey by train takes nearly two days to finish which terminates at a port city from where the last mile to the island is covered by a ship.
6. I along with my family were sitting on a bench waiting for the train to arrive.
7. Five minutes later a man in his mid 40s came and sat beside me.
8. He immediately took out his phone and dialed someone.
9. I did not mean to eavesdrop on his conversation but it caught my attention when he mentioned the words medical, non-medical, IT, computer science and job placement.
10. I discerned from his conversation that he was talking about career choices for someone, most likely his child or someone close to him.
11. And I turned out to be right when he further said that his son is not sure which stream to choose for his professional studies.
12. His conversation lasted for nearly 15 minutes after which he started doing something on his phone.
13. Since I had some knowledge about this field I thought I might help that person so I broached the topic with him.
14. First of all I asked about the interests of his son.
15. He told me about his son’s predilection for technology and accordingly I suggested him that his son should opt for non-medical stream for his higher study.
16. It was fine as far as his interest was concerned but then he inquired about career choices that his son would have if he chose non-medical.
17. To be honest he was a bit skeptical about non-medical because he knew few of friends’ sons who did engineering and were hard pressed to find suitable employment opportunities for themselves.
18. He shared his apprehension with me and I acknowledged the fact that things have changed a lot in recent years.
19. But I reassured him that if his son chooses the relevant field and performs well then there is no dearth of opportunities.
20. I then apprised him of the couple of fields of technology which are growing in demand such as nanotechnology and biotechnology.
21. I was able to dispel his apprehensions to a large extent and he thanked me for my counsel and said that he would suggest his son to choose non-medical.