After this, you find the course and the university you want. This particularly applies for students who do not choose medicine as a course of study. Three or four years later, at the end of the course, you are ready to look at the next milestone in your life - that of finding a job. Many of you get your first job break through your campus interviews and the others - the less fortunate ones - try harder in the job market. During the process, if you look back, you would not have spent even one tenth of the time for selecting your course and identifying your choice of the institute in deciding on 'who would you like to work with'.

Getting it right first time - is not a maxim that can be attributed to your first job. Why is it that you feel that you are in wrong job soon after your first breakthrough? You consider the tangibles like Salary, designation, carreer path, the employer's credentials, choice of location - foreign or local etc., But, have you ever thought about the intangibles?

What are these intangibles? Your own aptitudes, your strengths, weaknesses, your special skills which you developed from your childhood, your abilities which were successfully demonstrated when you were at school or college. What do you do about these? Do you feel that you often shut the door on all these and just chase the money?

You need to spend time on these equally. You could start doing that from the first year at your college. You would get full three, four or six years to understand yourself.

Always treat your first job and your first three years in any job as an opportunity for learning. An attitude to learn should be the first and sole criteria.