“College A has an average placement CTC of ₹9.34 lakh, while College B only has ₹8.87 lakh.”
“Okay.”
“So, I think I should go for College A.”
“Why?”
“Because it has better placements.”
“And why does that matter?”
(utter silence)
These were the exact words exchanged between my younger sister and me when she was choosing a college for her undergrad. She didn’t have an answer to a simple question that nobody had asked her yet.
Why was she making this decision based on placements?
Did it matter? Yes.
Did it matter to her? She didn’t know.
So why was she deciding based on things she couldn’t care less about?
When Anusha had just graduated from grade 10, she faced one of the most challenging decisions to make (or at least that’s what every teenager thinks) – choosing her stream of study.
She was academically gifted (not as blessed as yours truly 😉), so choosing science was always on the cards. However, all her family members, including her brother, mom, and dad, were commerce folks. While none of us forced her, she decided that science would make a lot of sense to her.
Coming from a non-science background, none of us had the experience of being science students, but we decided to do our best in helping her succeed.
Fast forward two years, and she is done with her JEE Advanced and is now choosing colleges. She couldn’t be more confused than she ever had been in her life.
It was a tough decision. She had a seat confirmed at two very similar colleges, each having its own sets of pros and cons. Both were equally good at delivering quality education to their students.
That’s when she turned to placement stats to break the tie, and I couldn’t have been more furious.
Making tough decisions can seem like a massive burden, especially when it’s a high-stakes decision and the left side of our brain can’t arrive at a logical conclusion.
There are simply too many qualitative factors, variables, probabilities, and unknowns that can make us question our choice of one option over another.
This is when we often turn our backs on our honest selves and make decisions based on how the world wants us to, rather than what we truly desire.
Colleges offer so much: clubs, experiences, friends, education, and obviously, placements.
Yet, every college pitch, presentation, or deck starts with how many students they placed last year and what the highest package was.
It’s not just colleges; even uninformed and jealous extended family members judge a child’s success in their studies based on the average CTC of the college they got into.
But that’s not why people should pursue college, and we must approach this from a first-principles perspective.
I simply love the “Five Whys” approach because of how uncomfortable it makes me in every situation.
It helps me determine the root cause of the problem by repeating the question “why?” five times, each time directing the current “why” to the answer of the previous “why.”
If you are truly honest in answering those questions, and then make a decision based on the last “why,” that decision is the rawest and most honest depiction of your true self.
And I believe that is the definition of a good decision.
There are no inherently good or bad decisions. It is about making a decision and proving it right.
You can make any decision right only if the source of that decision is your honest self, not what others have engineered into you.
This is because only “your” decisions will have the backing of the internal belief system that you uphold. Rest decisions fade into oblivion.
“Okay, let’s take a step back.”
“Hmm…”
“Why did you take up science in the first place?”
“Because I liked it.”
“Why did you like it?”
“Because I had an interest in computers and stuff.”
“Why did computers interest you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Haha, koi baat nahin. So your decision to choose science was because you had an interest in it?”
“Yes.”
“And it had nothing to do with money or career growth?”
“Ummm… No.”
“Then why are you making a decision based on that now? If money and placements were the only things that mattered to you, shouldn’t you actually go for a field that pays the highest?”
Knowing your why is crucial in making decisions because it simplifies and clarifies the process.
There are millions of factors that can impact your decision, but if you know your why, 99.9% of them shouldn’t matter to you.
Coming back to which college to choose, the answer was simple.
Choose the one that sounded most interesting to her. She had an interest in basketball and dance. She was curious about many different things. Moreover, she wanted to move far away from her hometown to experience new things.
Therefore, she chose the college in Bangalore, far from her hometown, but with the comfort of having her brother in the same city.
Was it the right or wrong decision? – We don’t know.
Was it HER decision? – Abso-fucking-lutely yes.
Will she make this the right decision for herself? – I do not doubt it.
Unless you make a grossly wrong decision, you will do just fine.
You can try to be precise in your decision, but in the pursuit of precision, you might lose the bigger picture and end up harming yourself.
It’s better to be vaguely right than precisely wrong. Embrace vagueness rather than precision.
And even then, if no decision can be made, just trust your gut.
Unfiltered instincts are just a lazy way of describing God’s hand in your life. These are subconscious decisions that our conscious mind cannot comprehend or understand, and therefore we dismiss them.
But never do that. You don’t understand because you are human. To err is human. Let the supernatural take the steering wheel of your life in these times and witness the magic unfold.
Here’s to making more (very) tough decisions.
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