career day

So this Diwali was full of Indian type fun and frolic - a happy bunch of us ate dial-a-curry Indian food, sipped on Bacardi mixed only with paani (true Indian ishtyle) and watched a wide screen screening of Monsoon Wedding, while nibbling happily on Kaaju katli. A half hour long cross-country bike ride deposited me back home at around 4 am and the last thing I wanted to do was get to lab on 4 hours of sleep to save my pet bacteria from dying (so I can kill them in a more systematic fashion later). But I discovered, quite abruptly the next morning, that it was in fact, not the last thing I wanted to do. The last thing I wanted to do was sit for 5 hours at the Lifesciences Career day Talk organized by our beautiful Faculty of Science who want to prove that no, this is more than just a glorified lab course. And fail miserably at that end for the third time in a row.

"You bum."
"b..wa..a....hoo?
"Wake up. Remember the career fair?"
" Iaya..aya... ai.. faara..thoeo...uaghxxj80@#mxiau...aisiana."

"If you rush, you'll still be able to make it. Come on. UP!"

OKAY. Time to wake up. I'm in my final year. I'm in my final year and I'm not even ready for Career day. Dang.

Challenge #1: Be dressed to kill.
formals..formals...formals...where do I find formals. The thing is, I'm not a formal person. I hate wearing anything that makes it difficult for my butt to breathe (an exception are my Wrangler jeans and you may note the not-so-subtle connotations of its nomenclature. Those are for clubs, where I consider it's better, actually, that it (butt) doesn't (breathe)). I've never bought formals. The only pair of black pants I own were bought as part of a dance costume...Okay they'll have to do.
Now for a top. Aaha..Bingo. $8 black tee from Giordano (thank heavens for lycra :P) A forma-lish pullover, steel earrings (I picked those up for the clubbing purposes as well), heels and I'm good to go.

Challenge #2: get through Registration- since I haven't registered.
I'm an hour late but apparently, they have no problem letting me through. It must be my killer look, I swell. But no, once inside, its pretty obvious that the LT's big enough to seat a lot of us irresponsible unregistered ones.

Challenge #3:
Well, there's no challenge three. Its just Career Day for heaven's sake.

I got there, armed with my laptop and Jane Austen's Emma ( so convinced was I of the seminar subjecting me to a greater degree of boredom). But much to my surprise, they had some really fun speakers down.

Stella Tan is a Masters in Life sciences who went on to get a Law degree at NUS. She looks like she belongs in a prime time TV drama. In fact, her work pretty much is a prime time TV drama- she argues for cases from a forensic standpoint and as a result, had some really gory, stomach-upsetting slides on her power point for us.
"You just make your own career route. Try not to do what everyone else is doing."

During the Q&A session, quite a few mahaan students asked the panel how one could become a CEO of something or the other.
"To become CEO. It has always been my dream. So how-a?"
This question was actually considered seriously by our panel and the CEO of Temasek Lifesciences Lab said.
" You have to have a passion for the job. All my friends who made it in Science, they had a real love for it and so did I. Then you work your way up."

Then there was the director of the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity.

"All you’re A’s…. no one’s going to know anything about them a year down after graduation. Once you get to the interview table, the things that’ll really matter are:

1. soft skills
2. global knowledge
3. interactive skills
4. emotional quotient
5. knowledge of the world

So, go read a newspaper, I say."

I've obviously used my selective hearing superpowers and sifted through a whole lot of BS that also inevitably made its way through to this day. (For eg, the answer to the question " Why doesn't the Faculty of Science have a graded internship program? Why do you send your kids out with no working experience whatsoever?" was - "Bla..blablablaa.. bla bla..blaa.")

But for once, life sciences career day turned out to be more just, career day and wasn't really half useless. Emma remained unread.