Dietician

Query received from a student:
How does one become a dietician? What are the career opportunities in this field?
Priya (Allahabad)

Reply from out FutureMap counsellor:
Dear Priya,

To become dietician, it is easier to pursue post graduation course as with a few expectations, dietetics is studied only after a bachelor’s degree in any one of the following disciplines: home science, medicine, science (with chemistry, microbiology), hotel management and catering. Some universities offer postgraduate diploma courses in dietetics. Subjects taught in dietetics include chemistry, physics, nutrition and physiology. Dietician may be taken up as a specialization in home science at the Master’s degree level in many universities in the country. Delhi university, university of Mumbai / Madras also offer nutrition / health and nutrition as subjects at bachelor’s degree level. Dietician finds jobs in hotels, hospitals, in the processed food industry, and in teaching. The most lucrative prospects are in the field of private enterprise keeping in view the present trend for health food. Residential schools, Railways, and airlines also employ dieticians to run and / or supervise their catering services and look after their nutritional needs.

Advertisement

What are the Job Opportunities in a Dot Com Company?

Here are a plethora of options available to you if you wish to choose a career in a dotcom company. Take a look at the following:

Venture Capitalist
Venture capitalist is a person who funds a web site. He gives money to the entrepreneur who wants to create a web site. He carefully analyzes the person’s financial statement, business proposal and then gives him the money. He then claims return on the money he invested and holds a stake in the company which the entrepreneur has created.

Web Developer
Web developer develops, implements, maintains and enhances Internet web (portal) sites for businesses, profit/non-profit organizations, colleges, governmental agencies and other entities through his knowledge of programming and server software operation. Web developers apply principles of programming, design engineering and mathematical calculations to create web sites and systems for traditional personal computer access to the Internet and for wireless access.To become a web developer you can either learn the computer languages sitting at home or through a software institute. A piece of advice: You become more proficient in your work by practice and not by theory. So, it is better that you keep practicing.

Web Designer
Web designer designs a web site pertaining to the requirements of the
company. He takes into consideration the connectivity and the bandwidth and the cost while designing the web site. There are several courses in multimedia which teach you graphics in web designing. It’s not that you need a background in fine arts to know web designing but it is helpful to have a keen sense of design.

Nano Technology in India

Query by a student:
Hi! What is nanotechnology and what are the career opportunities in this field?
Sameer (Delhi)

Reply from our FutureMap counsellor:
Hi Sameer,
Query received from a student:
Nano Technology is an interdisciplinary subject. Many fields of endeavour contribute to nanotechnology, including molecular physics, materials science, chemistry, biology, computer science, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering. One can study nanotechnology at postgraduate level and also go ahead with Ph.D. For admissions to M. Tech. (Nanotechnology) course candidates must have a B. Tech. / B. E. degree in Biotechnology, Chemical Engineering or Pharmaceutical Technology with at least of 65% marks. Besides other institute IITs and Indian Institute of science are well known for this course. The students with a degree in nanotechnology can find employment opportunities in a number of fields like: Agriculture, Food and Beverage, Genetics, Bio-technology, Space Research, Forensic Science, Environment industry, Medicine, Teaching etc.

Are you Servicing material?

You should be:

–A good orator and have excellent command over written and spoken English.
–Good at marketing skills, have a keen business acumen and administrative ability. Prompt decision-making ability is an advantage.
–A people’s person: Someone who enjoys talking to people. You must be patient, as sometimes an overdose of work can get you worked up, and that will affect your performance. So it’s important that you keep your cool.
–Highly motivated: You need to have tremendous willpower to stay in this kind of a job, to fight off the lethargy that sets in when you attend to calls at 3 a.m. Likewise, you need to avoid feeling frustrated when you haven’t got a single call the entire day.
–A team player: Even though you are servicing individuals, this career demands a lot of teamwork. Your attitude and work ethics affect your teammates.
– Organized or you’ll end up in a situation where your boss urgently asks for some important papers and you won’t even know where to search for them.

You should not be:

–Irregular at work.
–Haphazard in your work. You need to systematically capture details of your customer’s requirements and
also manage your work space effectively so that you don’t
waste time.
–Lethargic. You need to keep refining your skills. For example; If you don’t know how to use a software, you need to start learning it.

Special Education

If you want to be a special educator, you should be pretty special yourself. For teaching special children requires you to have all the qualities that make a great kindergarten or primary schoolteacher – patience, creativity, and so on – but in far larger quantities. Plus a whole bunch of other attributes – sensitivity, understanding, empathy…

Teaching Special Children

If teaching is a noble profession, if imparting knowledge is a blessed vocation, if molding young and impressionable minds is a responsibility bigger than any other, then special educators are the noblest, most blessed, and most responsibility-ridden teachers of them all.

Cheerfully taking under their wings those children of a lesser God who need special care, affection and education, these courageous, dedicated men and women make it their business to see that their wards learn to be self-reliant, making full use of opportunity and with hope, and as normal as their various disabilities permit them.

Special educators teach the visually-impaired, the hearing- impaired, the mentally-challenged in all their forms, and the physically-disabled. They also teach children with learning disabilities like dyslexia. Their job is as much about teaching these children their ABC as it is about teaching them to dress themselves, to board buses and cross the street themselves independently, to speak even if they cannot hear, to pick up a phone and call for help, and, in some cases, simply to hold a pencil tight. Not only do special educators have to build their wards’ knowledge bases, but they also have to build their self-confidence and self-esteem.

A special educator’s entire efforts are geared more towards the all-round development of their wards and less towards making them toppers at the school or university level. And since there are no special colleges for their students, these teachers work hard to ensure that their special children will fit into normal colleges and normal society by the time they leave their hands, so that they will have all the opportunities that other children have in life.

Are you a ‘special educator’ material?

Special educators learn to live with unhappiness and occasional depression and gloom at the injustice of it all, but also learn to overcome it so that they pass on only cheerfulness and hope to their students. But they all swear that even the occasional triumph – the first time a visually-impaired student walked into a bank and deposited a cheque, the first time a hearing-impaired student turned his lips perfectly and said the words back to them, the first time a spastic child buttoned her shirt on her own, the time one of their students quit the special school to join a normal school after passing an entrance exam – is enough to make all their years of effort worthwhile.

If you want to become a special educator, you should:

#First of all realize that the job is far from easy – The biggest joy of teaching is the response from your students, but in a special educator’s job, such responses may not be as quick, as extensive or as dramatic as those in a regular teacher’s job.

#Be very patient and calm, especially as each day will be quite different from any other and quite unpredictable altogether.

#Be very tough mentally – Children in your care may frequently exhibit extreme and unexpected reactions to situations, and you simply cannot afford to get rattled by such an occasion.

#Not be judgmental. It is not your students’ faults that they are the way they are.

#Be very sensitive to your students’ feelings.

#At the same time, harden your heart against feeling sorry for them, realizing that what they want is not your pity but your affection, your respect, and your support in turning them into worthy citizens of the society with a minimum of problems.

Photography

Query received from a student:
Are there any courses that teach you photography? How does one pursue this as a career?
Vinod (Kolkata)

Reply from our FutureMap counsellor:
Dear Vinod,
Photography is an art form; a medium in which to express ideas, so the eye, the brain and the mind are the tools that make you a good photographer. To become a successful photographer you need to use your common sense and work closely with other photographers. A professional photographer can work as an advertisement photographer, industrial photographer, fashion photographer, fine arts photographer and forensic photographer or as a freelance photographer in India. A wide range of opportunities are available in India where people appoint professional photographers to cover weddings, birthdays, festivals, and many important private events. A freelance photographer can also sell photographs to various journals, magazines, news channels and newspaper houses.

There are lot of institutes who are offering photography course. You can choose diploma, certificate or photography as one of the subject in a degree course. Post Graduate Certificate Course in Photography Design is offered by National Institute of Design, A three-year diploma in motion picture photography is offered by the Film and Television Institute, Pune, while the Mass Communication Research Centre (MCRC), Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi offers a 2-year post-graduate diploma in motion picture photography to graduates in any discipline. Most BFA or Applied Art Courses impart specialized training in photography. Indian Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi offers basic courses in Photography.

Qualities of an ideal Administrator

Before deciding weather you want to become a Civil Servant you will have to ask a few questions from yourself. If the answer that you get is an emphatic ‘yes’ then you can put your mind heart and soul into it and go about preparing for it. Nothing can stop you. Trust yourself and your abilities.

Good Knowledge- You should have adequate knowledge about all subjects and a wide perspective to look at every problem and situation from different angles before coming up with a solution. You have to be open to change

Good Judge of people- so that you are in a better position to handle different situations.

Good Listener- You have to have the ability to listen to people only then one can impart justice as one would have better information.

Effective Communicator- He may be well read but he has to have the ability to convey the ideas to the political establishment or to the people if need be in as simple a way as possible.

Cheerful disposition- Very important, a person with a cheerful attitude is one who can handle the severest of situations without getting bogged down by it. He can be the support system to the masses.

Graceful Personality-Its naturally expected in an officer of such high ranking. He should always conduct himself in such a way that inspires people to respect him and the govt. establishment.

Should not panic- He should be able to keep his cool even in the most challenging and tough situation. Should react proportionately to the degree of change. He must cope with situations elegantly.

Should be Sensitive- Since the ultimate end of his work is the welfare of people he has to be sensitive. Only then can he impart justice. He should have a sense of fair play.

Are you IT material? Qualifications for the career.

Are you IT Material?

You should:
#Be willing to work in front of the computer screen for hours together. It requires you to be glued for long hours in front of your computer. There are instances where people take several days to get their project running.
#Know your computer inside out. You should not get alarmed when your computer shows an error and you know where exactly is the problem coming from. #Be aware of the latest technology from leading software firms. You need to keep on reading computer magazines and surfing web sites to know what are the latest useful softwares available and keep downloading them.
#Help your friends whenever they have a problem with their computer.

You should not:
#Be afraid of experimenting with your computer. (This does not mean you format the computer or dismantle the motherboard.)
#Be afraid of asking questions regarding your computer to your assembler or search for information about how the computer works on web sites.

For this Career, what should I do?

Id you check out the young achievers’ section? You have 11-, 12-year old children achieving world records and with jobs in IT firms. So, the best thing to do is to start now. You can start training yourself in the following ways:
Get a formal graduation, qualification
a. BE/BTech
b. B.Sc (Computers or IT)
c. BCA – Bachelor of Computer Applications
Get a formal postgraduate degree (after graduation)
a. MCA – Master of Computer Applications
b. MCM – Master of Computer Management
Study a course offered by private institutions. These do not get you a formal degree, but a certificate that is of value to employers.
The government has created a certifying authority, DOEACC, so it is best if you do a course that is accredited by the DOEACC. It has defined 4 ‘levels’ of courses:
The ‘O’ Level (Foundation Level): for immediately after 10+2
The ‘A’ Level (advanced diploma level): for graduates and those qualified at ‘O’ level
The ‘B’ Level (graduate level)
The ‘C’ Level (postgraduate level)
Get an industry certification from an international IT company. Several companies like Microsoft, IBM, etc. offer certification courses that are internationally recognized. These companies have authorized several training institutes to train candidates and also conduct the certification examinations. Visit the company web site for more details. You could study abroad, give the GRE (Graduate Record Exam) and do your MS or PhD in the US. Several of the Indian IT gurus did the same. This way you not only get the best education but also are where all the action is.

Theater – Requirements and In the Balance.

Are you Theater Material?

You should be:
#Gregarious, focused on the task you’ve set for yourself, and skilled in human resource management.
#Talented, and have the necessary skill for creative writing. #“You also need to be willing to keep working,” believes award-winning playwright, R. Ramanathan.
#Disciplined – It calls for intense discipline of mind and body. You have to go over each step many times until you can execute it perfectly. This calls for patience.
#Confident and have a firm faith in yourself as this positive belief will carry you through the ups and downs of this very competitive and demanding field.

You should not be:
#”Hasty, angry, impatient, overly optimistic or quick to take offence,” warns Joy Fernandes, reputed stage actor-director-writer, also film actor and writer.
#“Arrogant, stubborn, lazy, unreliable or afraid of manual work,” says theatre personality Divya Bhatia. Actually, whether you are a director or a technical person, the willingness to do manual work should be an important part of your personality.
#In it for money It’s not a career option. A playwright does not make too much money. If you are lucky you get a royalty per show or at the end of a batch of shows. Marathi and Gujarati theatre give the playwright a royalty ranging from Rs. 50-1000 per show.

In the Balance:

The good bits:
#“The joy of creating a play in a collective effort is unparalleled,” feels director-actor Rajat Kapoor.
#”The joy of being on-stage and connecting with the audience, even for a moment, is a high that cannot be matched. What you get out of it is tremendous, but intangible. Why do people have babies? Mainly for the joy they bring, right!”

On the other hand:
#”Rejection during auditions is something you have to be able to take in your stride. You spend long periods being without work. It’s a constant struggle.”
#Divya Bhatia, workshop consultant and Joint Festival Director for the Prithvi Festival, 2003, adds, … “Your parents will throw you out. Everyone will ask ‘what do you do,’ regardless of the number of times you tell them. Also, there’s a constant struggle for money. Raising money for a production can be a challenging task!”jokes Rajat.
#”This is not a 9-5 job, so even the best in the field keep at it. You need a certain amount of discipline because you are working with yourself,” he explains.
#“There is more stress on stage, because stage is performing live without any cuts” – Smita Jaykar – famous theatre personality, and Aishwarya Rai’s mother in the movie “Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam”.

Archaeologist

Question received from student:
What is an Archeologist? How can I become an Archeologist? Please tell me about the job prospects.

Reply from our FutureMap counsellor:
Dear Anita,
An Archeologist studies past human life and culture by closely examining remaining material evidence such as sites, buildings, tools and artifacts. It is a multidisciplinary science which draws help from geography, history, anthropology, chemistry, geology, art and literature. It is also regarded as one of the four branches of Anthropology, which is the study of the physical and social characteristics of humanity. Archaeological studies or inputs are considered important in issues such as environmental conservation, urban societies, town planning etc. These discoveries involve a variety of field techniques and laboratory procedures.
Archaeology is offered at post graduate level. You can do Diploma, Postgraduate Diploma or Post graduation (MA/ M.Sc.) in different fields of Archaeology. Duration of these courses may vary from 1 year to 2 years. Admission to the two year Post Graduate Diploma course at the Institute of Archaeology, the academic wing of the Archaeological Survey of India in New Delhi is one of the best options. Many Universities also offer this course. At a higher level, you can also conduct research on the various branches of Archaeology; can do Ph. D after your post graduation.

Archeologists are employed in Defense services, museums, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, cultural centers and historical division of the Ministry of External Affairs. A degree holder in Archaeology can work as tourist guides, heritage managers, interpreters, resource persons of trip organizers in the tourism industry etc.