Friday, November 24, 2006
I met a guy on the plane who's a graduate from Imperial College - Chem Engin. He told me that he had lived in France for three years and then moved to NYC to work for another three. At first I assumed he was Canadian (by default) but then his brit accent quickly gave him away. I quite liked it. It was refreshing to hear a non-north american accent in north america for a change.
After he found out that I was at McGill for exchange, we started comparing universities. He was strangely unbashful when it came to telling me about his accomplishments. I'd never met anyone so irrepressibly proud of Imperial college - he couldn't stop waxing lyrical on the strength of its engineering program and the quality of its graduates. I had to bite back the urge to remark that I found it funny how he, a first class honors in chem engin, had ended up doing Finance in New York City instead.
The guy had friends in high places, so I found out. He had a guy friend doing a PhD at McGill, a lady friend making a tidy fortune from her dental practice in NYC and yet another guy friend who'd recently obtained a professorship at McGill's (prestigious) department of Biochemistry. Judging from all the exotic places he'd visited (nepal, north india, thailand, indonesia and the philippines, in addition to having covered almost all of Europe and North America), I thought he was doing pretty darn well himself.
As much as people insist otherwise, I find that a prestigeous degree DOES ultimately matter - in fact, it matters alot to students as well as employers. And as much as I hate the paper chase and western-centric academic elitism, I find myself getting sucked into it as well, wishing that I was graduating from McGill instead of NUS.
Q: Why do I let a piece of paper define my self-worth?
A: Because that's how the rest of the world else defines me and I've been conditioned to adopt their definitive standards.
Q: How do I stop chasing paper? Do I even want to?
A: I don't know and I'm not sure.
planted @
3:19 AM
