Rise and Shine

Pursuing independent studies

I have a friend whom I have known for a long time. In fact, he was a classmate in college.

This friend has recently landed himself a very lucrative managerial job in a very promising company trading in a vibrant industry sector. This journey for my friend has been a long and tedious one.

When I trace his journey, I find that key to his success has been the spirit of increasingly empowering himself through independent on-job-learning through independent studies.

This friend started learning things on his own many years ago. I remember that during the five years of engineering studies at The Polytechnic, this friend had big interest in computers. He spent a lot of his spare time opening up computers to learn how their hardware pieces worked.

He repaired many personal computers along the way. His room was opposite mine in college and so I remember how each time you went to his room, he was busy repairing computers. Every day, after study time around 10 pm, he would be working on computers until around 1 am. He also spent most of his weekend time learning and understanding computers.

For his final degree project, again he chose to do a computer programming project. After graduation, he went straight into the information technology (IT) world. Unfortunately for him, he did not join a big IT department. He was basically the only IT person in the company where he was.

Many would have done very little in this situation, or left the job to those who were more experienced. But my friend took this positively as an opportunity for him to quickly learn many things. He maintained his proven approach to professional development and personal growth through self-study.

A lot of times when we caught up on the phone, he would share with me the new things he had recently learnt. In his early months in the new job, he spent long hours at night and during the weekends on the Internet-searching for new knowledge and skills.

Whenever the company had to implement new solutions, he worked hard to understand the workings of the new solutions so that he could do it by himself. Within three to five years, he quickly became a great expert and an all-rounder in the IT world.

Ten years since graduation now, he is a force to reckon with in his industry and it came as no surprise to me when, recently, he landed himself a big managerial job in a new company where he is set to make a significant contribution to the business.

As you will have seen from the story above, my friend has excelled simply because he has constantly maintained one thing that works in his life—pursuing independent studies, learning things on his own, searching for knowledge and continuously building his professional skills.

But, how many of us do this? How many of us believe that we can acquire new skills at little or no cost at all? Many of us believe that we can only learn new skills and acquire new knowledge by enrolling on expensive study programmes, most of which are conducted abroad.

Perhaps this success story of my friend will make some of us think twice and begin to constantly teach ourselves new things. We can now be energised to cheaply seek expensive knowledge and acquire dear skills. Good luck as you set out on this new and progressive path to success! All the best as you rise and shine!

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