Who said a degree in the Humanities only qualifies you for the marriage market? Benita Sen shows you new direction in this second of a two part series.
APPLIED ART If you’d rather draw a line than draw an inference, creativity is your strong point. And although your grandparents may have greyed overnight if a child opted to study art, today, artists are sought after and respected for their unique creativity.
Armed with a BFA which you can pick up from the best of art schools like Sir J J School of Art (Mumbai), Faculty of Fine Arts (Baroda), Kala Bhavan (Shanti-niketan) or College of Art (Delhi), you can find employ-ment in newspapers and magazines, web designing, with advertising agencies and even with designing for greeting card companies.
With a little experience, this is a field where freelance work is widespread. The art mart awaits!
PHOTOGRAPHY Shutter bugs are a much-wanted tribe. Ask any journalist who needs quality photographic cover for an assignment.
With a degree course in photography, offered by Fergussen College, Pune, Jiwaji University, Gwalior and Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, you are headed for a career that is intensely satisfying and creative.
From photo journalism to fashion and wildlife to food photography, the field is vast. Then, there are advertising agencies looking for a reliable photographer to entrust perhaps the most visible aspect of their prestigious assignments to. With a providential blend of talent and perseverance, you could soon click!
ANTHROPOLOGY, SOCIOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY With a burgeoning economy, manufacturers, advertising agencies and retailers need to know what the customer who is king will prefer. And that’s where the market research analyst comes into play.
You don’t have to be a number cruncher and to have studied Statistics to qualify. A degree in Anthropology, Economics, Psychology or Sociology, will teach you in depth about people and the way they live, think and behave. Go on, the world’s one mad marketplace!
You could also work as a counsellor in a school or office, or social organisation. You could be attached to a hospital or set up your own clinic. These days, innovations in the field of mentally challenged children attract good funding and great opportunities for research, provided you have the commitment for the task.
POLITICAL SCIENCE If you’ve studied the machinations of politics, who can be better equipped than you to explain to the world what you read between the lines?
Apart from teaching it as an academician, political science grads can preach with the pen as political correspondents with newspapers, magazines or in the electronic media. Says Radhika Singh, a trainee reporter, "On the beat, I understand so many things that my non-Pol Science colleagues may not".
You could also try your hand at being a consultant to foreign companies looking to invest in India or to organisations like the world bank, who require a working knowledge of the political environment.
HOME SCIENCE Your grandmother probably graduated in Home Science, so that she’d be considered an eligible bride. A couple of decades ago, there was little that you could do with that degree, but things have changed.
Now you can be a hot shot dietician, with either a gym or a nutritionist, with a salon or a fitness centre, or work as a consultant to the cream of the hospitality industry, depending on your area of specialisation. If you are more textile and handicraft oriented, the world of fashion is open to you.
While most institutes offer a diploma in textile design after the student completes 10 + 2, the cream of them all, N ational Institute of Design (the NID), Paldi, Ahmedabad, also has a three-year advanced level programme that could see you dressing up the world in the designs you fancy!
LANGUAGES If you have a flair for languages, there’s more you could do than teaching it. Interpreters and translators are always in short supply at foreign embassies and industrial houses, research departments and as a freelancer, and when foreign tourists need help with the language. Let those tongues wag!