Trying something new here, I’m going to write  on the fly, not in the plane or writing on an actual fly but writing on my mobile. I feel if I keep procrastinating, I’ll never write anything at this rate.

Anyway, I was quite productive today. I went to take photos with two of my friends who graduated today. Speaking of which, I’m graduating soon! Following that, I caught up with two friends! One of whom I haven’t caught up with properly for one and a half years. She was one of the few engineering friends I still keep in contact with because we could always talk more than engineering. With most of my engineering course mates, we do find ourselves not having topics to talk about because

a) I don’t play League of Legends
b) I don’t watch Australian Football League or cricket or any Aussie sport (I feel there’s a joke I can make here but I rather not thread on)
c) I don’t talk about planes and cars all the time
d) I don’t Steam. That came out wrong but you know what I mean. Hopefully.

So whenever I could find a friend who has the same wavelength as me and could intertwine topics about life together with engineering. It is pretty cool. I think this brings me back to one of the subjects I did in uni. It was Professional Engineering and Communication. In one of the careers talk, they asked us to choose three cards from a deck which suggested what we want to do in our careers. I picked ‘Social Outreach’, ‘Helping Others’ and ‘Research’ if I recalled correctly. Others picked cards like ‘High Productivity’, ‘Inventing Solutions’ and ‘Team Management’. Something along those lines. In other people’s eyes, my cards were considered duds and so they were rarely chosen. They were like, “Why are you in engineering then?” I did not know what to say.

I think people have the opinion sometimes that helping people means becoming a nurse, priest, social worker, counselor and teacher. Quick to form judgement,  reaction can entail, “Oh you’re a teacher, great job girl, you’re going to help students.” or “Oh you’re an engineer, what field are you in and what projects have you been doing?” That’s quite a simplistic and narrow minded view on jobs that some have. It’s almost always either helping people or be a productive and financially capable professional. It’s never a melding of both because of perception that it’s a larger than life concept.

Having just came back from her exchange, my friend was struggling to find meaning in her studies again because she said she doesn’t know if biomedical engineering suits her anymore or rather, she doesn’t know the purpose of her degree anymore. She started her degree with the mindset of wanting to help others but somewhere along the way, maybe she doesn’t quite know if she is able to do that with her current degree and lost the motivation needed.

This is also where I struggle with at times. What is helping others? It’s so easy to spit out those words but honestly, how do you help others?

As I ponder that question, I caught up with another friend who funnily enough, is the epitome of someone always putting others before herself. Being busy with her second degree, college commitments and family  responsibilities, she volunteers to teach mathematics to refugee students two days a week. In my mind, I was thinking you should get paid while doing it. But then that defeats the purpose, purest form of giving is always in giving without expecting anything in return.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s what helping is. It should be second nature to us just as talking is. In any role or job, we focus on the productivity and success aspect of it. This is measured by public recognition, annual salary and life benefits. Practically, that’s perfectly fine. We all need to survive and raise families someday. We all want fashion, gadgets and automobiles.

However, I think helping is not limited by the scope of the job. It may not be quite obvious but anything can aid towards that. I don’t think the cards I chose are duds. They are something everyone including myself should keep in mind. There’s no need for compartmentalisation between selflessness and career. It helps bring a sense of purpose to what we do.

The argument can be made that why should we help others if no one helps us. It brings us back to the truest form of giving. Don’t expect anything in return. We are definitely entitled to want people to treat us well. However as always, “do unto others as you want others to do unto you”.

Simple advice but one we all struggle with but hopefully continue to persevere despite hardships and doubts.