How to Make the Right Choice of Institute

What to study, where to study and how to study is always a challenging question.
Education industry is growing by leaps and bounds bringing multitudes of options to us.
This is a boon to the students of today as it offers a choice and option for the best. However the competition among the Educational institutes means huge amount of marketing activity. The target of this marketing activity is us, the students and parents of these students.

Unfortunately the scope of the marketing stretches to glamorizing the individual products that are sold. These products are the courses that are offered by these institutes. Since the options for the students are vast, the individual institutes have to go out of their way to impress about what they have to offer. In the process, lots of facts are covered up by layers of glamour. For example- Many institutes resort to highlighting their air-conditioned study halls and provision of laptops to their students. Factors like these hold tremendous attraction for students at that tender age.

In my counseling centre parents approach me with a stubborn child who insists on joining a particular institute for reasons of glamour. Often when I ask these students about what is so good about this institute, they are not able to quote anything more than the glamorous ads they had read. To my surprise when I talk about the courses offered, these students are naively ignorant and yet not interested in the details of the course curriculum.

To my dismay many institutes that boast of state of the art infrastructure do not believe in investing in human resources and severely lack trained and experienced staff. I would like the leave the institutes to their fate as they are mostly in the fray of the business. However that leaves a tremendous responsibility on the students and the parents to choose an institute that caters to their requirement of learning and developing a satisfactory career for themselves and their children.

How to choose the correct institute:

To shortlist the suitability of the institute for your-self, ask the following questions:

1. Are the combinations of subjects offered right for you?
2. What type of degree is it?
3. Does it improve your chances of following your chosen career?
4. Will it be recognized by employers or educational organizations in the country
where you plan to take employment or higher education?
5. What are the options within the subject? 
6. What are the teaching methods? Will it solve your purpose?
7. What kind of teaching staff does the institute have at the time of your admission?
8. Are the classes conducted regularly with regular assessments?
9. How is the degree program assessed? Who is the assessing /verifying body?
10. Does the institute offer any scholarship?
11. Do they have hostel/ boarding facilities?
12. What is the placement strategy?

To get the current and authentic answers to your questions the following steps can be most helpful:

1. Refer to at least 3-4 authentic sources that compare college and institutes on the basis of various factors. There are many website on the internet. One has to remember that there is always a personal bias and many a times these comparisons are not complete.  

2. Talk to the current students of the concerned institutes- None but the students who are currently studying in the institute can give you the correct information about the quality of faculty and efficacy of education in that institute. Past students may give some details but remember that education is a dynamic phenomenon and faculty and administrators keep changing which may change the key essentials.

3. Study the prospectus of each institute in your list in depth. There are many important points about placement and scholarships etc that are mentioned in fine print and need to be questioned in time.

Most of all try to remove all influence from friends and marketing agencies to work on the selection process with as minimal bias as possible. All said and done you cannot be over careful about this selection process. Howsoever time consuming and tedious this may sound remember that this is going to ensure that the place you take your education is worth your time, money and investment of dreams.

Choosing a Rewarding Career in Sports Medicine

Sports medicine is a branch of medicine that deals with physical fitness, treatment and prevention of injuries related to sports and exercise.

What sort of work is available in sports medicine?
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sports_medicine)

Sports medicine specialists focus on the evaluation and non-surgical care of athletes and other active people. Sports medicine specialists are concerned with all problems -- injury and illness alike - related to athletics and physical fitness. They are especially well suited to care for people with medical problems (for example, asthma, diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis, or obesity) who wish to begin an exercise program, improve their fitness, and reduce risks to their health.

Sports medicine has always been difficult to define because it is not a single specialty, but an area that involves health care professionals, researchers and educators from a wide variety of disciplines. Its function is not only curative and rehabilitative, but also preventative, which may actually be the most important one of all.

Education:

Few Institutes in India offer courses in Sports Medicine and most of them are for students after MBBS or graduation in Physiotherapy.

Some of the educational institutes for sports medicine are:

1. National Institute of Sports, Sports Authority of India, Affiliated to Baba Farid University of Health Sciences Faridkot and Recognized by MCI)
Two year Post Graduate Diploma in Sports Medicine

2. Sports Authority of India, Patiala, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar.
Masters in Sports Medicine
Ph. No. +91-183-2258802-09 Extn. 3019

3. Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports - Patiala, Punjab
Post Graduate Diploma in Sports Medicine

4. Susruta Institute Of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation - Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh
Master of Physiotheraphy - Sports Medicine and rehabilitation

There are many sporting teams that employ a sports or athletic trainer who assists on a daily basis with basic knowledge in massage, strapping and response to acute sports injuries.

Job prospects:

The term Sports Medicine involves:

• Maintaining an athlete’s fitness and physical well being
• Assessing and treating injured athletes,
• Advising and educating on prevention strategies

Sports medicine career finds its prospects in various setups:

• Hospitals
• Sports Clubs
• Individual teams

Importance of Choosing the Right Career

We often wonder why there can be only one Dhirubhai Ambani, only one Narayan Murthy, only one Bill Gates, only one Albert Einstein and the likes? People take good education and work hard all their lives and yet manage to get through an average life collecting money for themselves and providing for their families. Somehow we do not take enough pains to think beyond that they might be extra ordinarily genius or purely in luck.

A deeper insight can show us something very obvious. All of these Achievers and many more like them have worked for and put their efforts where their natural aptitude and inclination was. It is a no- brainer to understand that when we do something that we are natural with, we produce extraordinary results.

Unfortunately, we choose the career that has given good results for others. So if a big brother has bagged a cushy job with engineering degree then we believe that engineering as a career is the best and so on. When we do not try to match our nature, our personality our aptitude to the demands of the career we enter into a land that is not for us. Then either we have to put in extra efforts just to sail through or we pass through the life with utter lack of any passion just because everyone does so and that we have to.

I can never over emphasize the importance of choosing a career that we are made for. Here I present for you my favorite story to illustrate my point. Hope it helps

A mother and a baby camel were lying around, and suddenly the baby camel asked, “mother, may I ask you some questions? Mother said, “Sure! Why son, is there something bothering you?

Baby said, “Why do camels have humps?” Mother said “Well son, we are desert animals, we need the humps to store water and we are known to survive without water”. Baby said, “Okay, then why are our legs long and our feet rounded?” Mother said, “Son, obviously they are meant for walking in the desert. You know with these legs I can move around the desert better than anyone does!” Baby said, “Okay, then why are our eyelashes long? Sometimes it bothers my sight”. Mother with pride said, “My son, those long thick eyelashes are your protective cover. They help to protect your eyes from the desert sand and wind”.

Baby after thinking said, “I see. So the hump is to store water when we are in the desert, the legs are for walking through the desert and these eye lashes protect my eyes from the desert then what in god’s name are we doing here in the Zoo!?”

Friends, students, parents and teachers, please take a note that these are mere animals and do not have much at stake, but we are people with real emotions, feelings, desires, aspirations and needs. If we do not choose a career suitable to our natural traits, we would spend most of this beautiful life feeling like we are living caged in a zoo often wondering what all beautiful and big things we could have achieved in this gifted life.