How it is at work

I used to like answering questions on Yahoo! Answers, especially questions about education. The reason for the past tense is that I got sick of it after doing it for the past 5 days on my job. Allow me to explain: 23rd of March 2011 marked the release of the results of the most publicized (in my opinion) standardized exam in our country. Three letters; S. P. M. In short, it's like puberty for brains. I'm guessing about 90% of 17 year olds in Malaysia takes the SPM (citation needed). So, some of them, fresh out of SPM, believing in everything their parents and teachers tell them (e.g. Get into the Science stream. You should become a doctor or a lawyer.) start asking a bunch of generic questions on Afterschool.my or our Facebook page. The most common one would be; "Hi. My results for SPM is (some-grades-I-don't-care-jackshit-about-why-are-you-telling-me-this-?). What course should I study?" The thing is, I don't really mind helping them find their 'destiny' in life. I actually like doing those things. But can they give me some clues? There's only about a thousand of courses they could do and all they're tellin' me are some grades that don't really matter. 'Cause we all know what the Ministry of Education do to our grades to make it seem like we're getting smarter so the big-wigs at parliament can pat themselves on the back and call it a job well done.

There's one type of people among these that are particularly annoying. I call them the 'Doctor-wannabes'. Similarly, they tell me a bunch of grades I don't wanna know but this time, they focus on the Science grades. Asking me if they can still study Medicine if they did badly in their Biology, Chemistry and Physics subjects. I don't know what the teachers and parents feed the kids but all of them seem to think that doing badly in SPM is of an equal standing to the end of their lives. Okay, so they didn't do well in Science....they can still go into private colleges to do Medicine. The extent of what SPM grades can tell in the future is about as much as my ability to predict what my dog is having for dinner tomorrow night. (Read: not much, only limited to the immediate future if any at all.) But the bigger issue here is not with their Science grades, it's in their ability to see the mistakes in saying; "How to study doctor?", "I want to study as a doctor." and "Choosing a doctor as my career path." If they can't even converse properly, how can they do all that molecular biology, virus detection stuff? I'm also seriously doubting their interest in Medicine. Are they sincerely considering Medicine as a career field because they want to help mankind and all that noble stuff or is it because of the money or maybe it's their parents' lifelong dream after witnessing their children play doctor? I don't know. What I do know however, is that half of them would probably just drop out the moment they know how difficult and time-consuming it is to study Medicine. And then they'll take up some generic course like Mass Comm (#6 in The 10 Most Worthless College Majors list) or Business Admin. This just goes to show how practical us Asians are when it comes to careers. It's all about the money, eh?