i try my hand at writing for a change

As I sit down in solitude and begin to think about the future, I feel completely lost. I am 17 years old, the age many believe is the right one to make ones decisions about ones own career. Many tell me that this decision will determine my success in life. Success is a major factor that becomes a career decider for many students like me.
In the path to success we are made to learn class 10 portions in class nine, as the marks obtained in class 10 exams determine another so called turning point in our lives. It is based on these marks that the schools determine which group their students would pursue (Science, commerce or humanities). These marks often don’t asses ones aptitude. The common practice in most schools is that students with high grades are given the groups they opt for, while the ones with not very high scores don’t even have a choice. The ones who opt for science say it is more interesting.
At the age of 14 or 15 they have hardly any idea of commerce or economics to opt for it.
They know that science will take them to their success where as the students who opt for other courses are said to have poor analytical capabilities. Does that mean a student who takes up humanities or anything other than science never be successful?

I sit back and wonder what made me opt for the science group. Sure enough parents and my peer group had an influence but, the system failed to provide me with enough information and the right career guidance. Only those with low scores opted for other groups. It was a shame if one did not get the science group.

Even after taking up the science course not many want to pursue with pure sciences. Many opt for engineering and are caught up in the race for the IIT’S and BITS pilani. Little do they realize there is no Nobel Prize for engineering. Nobody sits and thinks about what they really want in life.

Success is something every one wants, but does success mean pursuing a lucrative profession?

With numerous career options at hand I am totally bewildered. Just then pick up the book ‘one hundred great lives’ and I read this passage by Martin Luther King Jr:

We are challenged on every hand to work untiringly to achieve excellence in our work life. Not all men are called to specialized or professional jobs; even fewer rise to the heights of genius in arts or sciences; many are called to be laborers in factories, fields and streets. But no work is insignificant.
All labour that uplifts humanity has dignity and must be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
“If a man is to be called a street sweeper he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause and say:
here lived a street sweeper who did his job well.

And realize that this is some thing our system of education has never taught me.

PS: this is gonna be published in the new indian express