Univeristy of Guyana Open/Career Day Feature Address - Dr. Steve Surujbally

First of all allow me to thank the Chairman for his kind words of introduction. You know, they keep thanking me for responding affirmatively and with such alacrity to the request to give this Feature Address, when in fact it is I who should be grateful for the opportunity to share ideas with young, enthusiastic, hopefully absorptive minds.

My understanding is that this "UG OPEN DAY" is one of the many mechanisms which can expose aspiring students to possibilities that could define their future. This address seeks therefore to support this objective and to focus on sharing some thoughts primarily with the fourth, fifth and sixth formers in our midst.

It is a well known fact that Career Guidance is one of the most neglected areas (perhaps even non-existent) in our schooling system. As a result, most of our youth leave the schooling system without knowing which careers to follow and how to apply for further studies or jobs. This scenario is particularly obvious in the fields of science, engineering and technology.

At the National Advisory Committee on Education, a Committee on which both Mr. Alexander and I sit, I have been calling for a compulsory "Life Orientation" course at the end of secondary schooling which, inter alia, would have a career focused learning outcome.

This learning outcome would ensure that all learners demonstrate self-knowledge and the ability to make informed decisions regarding further studies, career fields and career-pathing.

I had envisaged this Life Orientation as an important inter-disciplinary subject that draws on and integrates knowledge, values, skills and processes. It promotes responsible citizenship and a productive life. More importantly it equips learners with knowledge and skills to make informed decisions and choices about their careers in a rapidly changing
society.

I am sure that you would have already been educated about the origin of the University of Guyana and the metamorphosis it has undergone since that red-letter day (October 1st, 1963) when UG formally commenced its academic activities. You now have five (5) Faculties and the School of Education and Humanities and the Institute of Distance and Continuous Education, altogether with almost thirty Departments catering to your educational needs and specifically targeting those building blocks associated with a holistic national development. Aspiring students, you do have an array of choices.

And here is where I might share the first thought with you. Whatever your desire, your choice (career path) must be realistic. Your choice must not be based on excursions of fantasy. It would not seem logical to me, generally speaking, for a student to choose
medicine as a career when the very sight and smell of blood and putrescent tissue would create violent and uncontrollable reactions. I am sure there are exceptions. Similarly, I do not believe it would necessarily be the right choice to enroll for engineering when one would have struggled with understanding even the basic concepts of mathematics and its allied fields (even if one achieved a Grade II/B). Again, I am sure that there are exceptions – but you get the point I am making. It would seem to me that there is a mutual exclusivity between, say, an extreme speech defect (stuttering) and the pursuance
of a career as a defence lawyer.

May I, within the context of a second shared thought, suggest that the objective linked to your choice should not be primarily and solely monetary gain which you perceive will arrive at the end of the road. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not advocating that remuneration is not important. Those of you who will join UG will be made to put in hard, long, exacting, cruel hours – especially if you have the desire and conviction to be an "A" student. After all that sweat and tears, it is only right that you harvest some tangible rewards. (I’ll come back to this later). But I can guarantee you that whichever course you take, once you put in the hours, once later as a young professional you commit yourself to serving the area in which you work with genuine effort, the recognition and remuneration will follow.

Then, thirdly, you might choose a career path based on the consideration linked with this delusion called prestige. When I was growing up, medicine, law and engineering represented the prestigious professions. It was as if careers in journalism, agriculture,
sociology, etc should not even and ever be considered as a path to traverse for any bright and ambitious young man or woman. (I wonder how much this is still the case). Of course, I won’t dwell on the rightness or wrongness of such a position. But since we are
sharing ideas I would want to provoke you to having second thoughts relative to this thing called prestige – and why we should not use it to define anything in our lives, not now, not later, not ever.

The quest for prestige is akin to arrogance. This cannot be a good and clean and acceptable human feature. In fact, one might argue that there is a certain psychopathology linked to a quest to attain status via the acquisition of a profession. Prestige is not the same as integrity. (Now that is something that must be the cornerstone of your striving). There is necessarily a fine line between the quest for prestige and the quest for power which in turn transmogrifies itself into the quest for authority and then, ultimately, protection from social challenge. Young ladies and gentlemen, don’t be fooled by people
who tell you that certain professions are (sexy and) great income generators, while others are useless and boring and will cast you into a perennial state of penury and poverty. One can find immense happiness in every profession. This quest for a supposed "prestigious" profession is an illusion. Also, the value of these prestige professions is transient. Of
the current "Big demand" professions not one is what a few years ago would have been termed a prestige profession.

I am sorry. I went on too long on this subject of quest for status and social prominence by using a profession, an education, to achieve this objective. If I might relapse into our vernacular- dis power acquisition t’ing is my kinnah. If status and social prominence is offered to you by others and come because of hard work and commitment and service to
your fellow citizens, then that is fine; but we must guard ourselves against heap and transient adulation and believing in the hype others are showering on you.

These adulators can change their tune in an instant. Fourthly, I would like you to factor into the equation of choice of career path, the concept of multidimensionalism. The old Romans had it right when they said mens sana in corpore sano – a strong mind in
a healthy body. I am sharing the thought with you that whichever career path you choose of the almost 30 possibilities offered by existing Departments here at the University of Guyana, you should find time to exploit whatever sports facilities the campus has to
offer. If they do not exist find the time to explore a sport elsewhere. And here again, be realistic. If you weight 90 pounds may I suggest (and I do not mean in any way to be derogatory) that you do not seek admission to the rugby team. There are so may other
sporting disciplines in which you can excel – long distance running, badminton, table-tennis, they can all give you an excellent work-out.

But, the multidimensionalism to which I referred is more than sport and academic subject matter. I beg those of you who will join UG (and many of you will enter these hallowed portals) to involve yourselves in as many areas of knowledge as your time permits. Where is it written that if you are studying medicine or the natural sciences that you cannot involve yourself, with some depth, in current sociological and societal issues? You can be studying agricultural science, yet if you also expose yourself to the methodologies linked with empirical observation you can become quite knowledgeable about the social undercurrents within, say, rural squatments, or the kinship and marriage
systems in an agricultural enclave. The point I am making is that since knowledge brings happiness, you should not allow a fixation with only one area of knowledge prohibit you from experiencing the joy you can garner from other allied or even extraneous and different disciplines. When you come here exploit the library and the once-again-emerging book shop to your advantage. You might question whether you will have
enough time to do all these things. I say find the time, even if you have to sleep less.

Earlier, in passing, I mentioned the word "service". You know, it is quite easy for students to fall into that vortex of "uppityness". I recall as young vet students how we used to discuss high first year vet science in the tramcar on the way home – impressing
(or boring) fellow commuters with our "knowledge" – when in fact we were just young fools showing off. Some of this is, I suppose, not bad. But I am appealing to you even now as many of you enter the work force or the University, please do not be sucked
into the maelstrom of self interest and self-centredness. Those of you coming to UG will be enjoying higher education and be fine-tuned with a special expertise; consequently, some of you might feel that you have a right to certain tastes and lifestyles that somehow are supposed to be complementary to such exposure, and that you are better than your fellow citizens whose taxes subsidize UG, better even than your own families who may have made sacrifices so that you can enroll in UG. I implore you, even now, to focus always on the end picture – that is, the constituency which you will be ultimately servicing and serving. Later on, when you are a professional and, because of you training, you have mastered your science, it will be so much easier then to fit in, not to be pompous, to be modest and caring because you would have inculcated the service ethic during the 3, 4 or 5 years here at UG.

I should mention, within this context, that for you to harvest satisfaction from the trust which your future constituency will repose in you, you must during those 3, 4 or 5 years be committed to the mastery of subject matter you have chosen to study. But again, as I have already said, and perhaps even more importantly you must train yourself to understand how your discipline co-relates and inter-relates with the other tiles which make up the total mosaic of service to society.

Young Ladies and gentlemen, during your stay at UG, should you choose to join this establishment, you will be given (or have access to) tools in your hands that can be instruments of change. Again, I must advise you to use them not for yourself and for your future personal aggrandizement, but on behalf of the constituency you will be serving – many of them greatly disadvantaged. You have to establish a partnership.

I don’t know what image of UG you have been receiving. But I know one thing: this is not High School. O’ Levels/CXC are far away from the mass of knowledge you will be receiving at this tertiary educational level. Let me tell you that there will be times when the subject matter will seem too copious, too ununderstandable and too depressing. That’s the down side. Be resilient, fight the guilt-trips and self-pity; battle your way out of the torpor (each person has (or will develop) his/her own method of dealing with such conditions). I can guarantee you that there will be successes. Join tertiary education and get addicted to success. University training is not (should not be) a stulifier of thought. Just the opposite: Academia stimulates cerebrality; it promotes questioning (I am tempted to say it should promote disobedience); it cultivates the need for positive
change of which you can be an integral part.

You, once you join this institution, must keep sharply in you developing minds the difference between what you want your world to be and what it actually is. Look, you will be confronted during your sojourn here with a multiplicity of policies, administrative
practices (malpractices?), work cultures, techniques and technologies. Through this kaleidoscope, you as students must keep clear in your mind your perception of the social, economic and political impacts of the knowledge which you will be acquiring. During this period I hope that you will come to understand that our world (this world) is neither romantic nor pessimistic. When you would have reached this stage you would have acquired, internalized and sustained forever a clarity of vision, a maturity of mind which
will serve this nation in good stead.

Dr R. S. Surujbally, A.A.

February 15, 2008