Two key elements you should keep in mind while reading: money and the *cough* country. These two are deciding factors who would affect me taking up a degree that I have no interest in (but still able to get a decent job to survive in THIS country), or encourage me to chase my dream goal of becoming a dietician.
We all know money makes the world go round, and this particularly applies to insanely rich teens who didn't get ideal grades to make it to local universities but able to enter universities out of Singapore. I have two friends who are going to Australia for their studies and obviously I am very happy for them, in terms that they would be able to study what they like and with passion to study getting a degree certificate won't be taxing. I know that time and time again I have been ranting continuously about how lack of money won't get my studies any further, but I still want to stress the fact that teens with average grades coming from a middle-class family won't be able to afford the overseas tuition fees... let alone the living costs!
The most (I wouldn't say "secure") "common" degrees that would probably guarantee a job for me in the harsh society would be education - that is confirmed employment but also a "last resort" to some people - human resource, business administration, tourism and nursing. The latter is a type of job that usually people, locally, look down as nurses give locals the impression that they clean up patients and serve food and tolerate all the nasty stuff coming from the patient. Most importantly, nurses are one of the few frontliners when facing an outbreak, especially the SARS outbreak, which they were very brave to put up with. This is the reason why you don't see many local nurses as their job scope are generalized into "cleaning up, face health risks, and abused by patients". So when would Singapore change the impression of nurses to those as heroic as doctors?
Getting a job in the business and tourism industry is easy, except that one has to be particularly outstanding and able to think on their feet to secure a place in the company. As a science student for the past 3 years, I have no clue on what business industry is about... however I feel that I am going to venture into human resource management due to the lack of funding for my dream degree and the unpaved road for my journey to become a dietician.
With that being said, there are two and only two ways in getting a chance to study a degree overseas: have filthy rich ancestors or parents, or being super smart and getting a scholarship.
I belong to neither category and I'm stuck in this country.
Good day.
