From now to September kids will qualify and start looking for success.

So first of all Congrats for successfully completing your course. Now apologies for creating a world where jobs are not as automatic as the head of the placement committee in your college told you.

We will all give you advice. Tons of it. First of all, do not take it.

Most of us are not qualified to tell you what to do. We did not listen to our parents. Most of us did not know what degree to get, and why. So clearly we are not qualified to tell you what to do. Our only qualification seems to be the fact that we were born BEFORE YOU were born, so we happen to be in the ‘giving’ age. If you do not respect age, great. Respect should be for something else other than age. Damn age.

Go and define success. Do not listen to me, your parents or anybody born before 1977. Or even better 1990.

What do YOU want to do? Go on a World tour? stay with animals and avoid humans? Go hiking and cycling? What gets you excited? See how you can do that AND GET PAID FOR DOING THAT.

If doing that makes you happy do it. Do not let your qualification (or lack of it), money, ego, parents, peers, be an hindrance.

Write down your OWN goals. Let it not read like society’s goals have been cut pasted. Typical society goals are marriage, house, children, ….blah blah. If you want it, fine. If you do not want it, dump it. Remember to pay off your loans – remember your parents funded it or your bank funded it. BOTH LOANS SHOULD BE REPAID. Without fail. Bank will hound you, parents will be indulgent.

Experiment, but put your heart, soul and sole into it! Complete dedication and effort should go into what you do. Attitude, Effort, Single Minded devotion are necessary.

Even when you do create something – it is the market which decides how much it is worth. If somebody had ‘described’ FB people would not have valued it at more than a few ’00 thousand US $. Somebody had to create it, unleash it, and then the market valued it at a few billion US $. Google was not the first mover in the email business.

For every successful product company that you see, a few ‘000 maybe lying unrecognised and struggling.

Keep all this in mind.

Now go and conquer the world. If you want to.

If you want to set up an NGO to rescue girls trapped in brothels go and do that. The world is waiting for the next mother Theresa.