Crossroads: Students at the Careergraph Live seminar

Is this the age of “more information and more confusion”? The hundreds of students who visited The Telegraph Careergraph Live, held at the Park Hotel from May 27 to 29, certainly seemed to endorse that. With the plethora of new career opportunities coming up every day, choosing the right career path has become a challenge in itself. So they flocked to The Telegraph Careergraph Live to find out about career options and clear their doubts.

For the participating institutions at the career fair too, it was an eye-opener of sorts. They had a busy time trying to cater to the queries of students who came to find out about courses such as hotel management, gem and jewellery design, medicine, genetics, computer applications, management, communications... the list is endless.

Students thought the career fair was a great idea. “I think it should be held more often, specially after the board exams. That’s the time when we are at a crossroads,” says Shalini Jaiswal, who has just passed her Class XII board exams from Calcutta Girls High School.

But the icing on the cake was the live sessions with our regular columnists, Dr Amrita Dass, director, Institute for Career Studies, Lucknow, and Pervin Malhotra, director, CARING, (Career Guidance India), New Delhi. The banquet hall at the Park where the sessions took place was packed to the rafters as hundreds of young people and their parents came to hear what they had to say.

Whether it was Dass’s talk on “know yourself, inform yourself and plan for yourself” or her discussion of various exam patterns at the Testability Live, or Pervin Malhotra’s magic mantra of “legwork, homework and network”, everyone listened with rapt attention. The question-answer sessions with our star counsellors were also a big hit.

Dr Amrita Dass

Parents were no less enthused. Madhu Jain, mother of Shradha, a student of Class X, had this to say: “The live sessions were very useful for the parents as well. There are so many new fields coming up about which we know nothing. So it is not always easy for us to guide our children. During the Q&A sessions, the children could voice their dilemmas and get guidance. We should have such sessions at least twice a year.”

The joy of finally interacting with their young readers in Calcutta was evident from the faces of Dass and Malhotra too. “It was wonderful to be able to talk to my readers here. They were bright and alert and were as confused as students elsewhere in the country. With so many career choices available, they really don’t know what to do,” says Malhotra. Adds Dass, “The crowd was wonderful. They were patient and asked a lot of intelligent questions. The parents were also forthcoming.”

Jayeeta Ganguly