"The Choice That Decides Everything"
They tell you that choosing a career is just a matter of following your passion. As if passion alone can pay rent or put food on the table. As if the decision you make at seventeen doesn’t end up steering your entire life.
I remember the pressure — teachers asking what I wanted to be, relatives hinting at “safe” choices, friends acting like they had it all figured out. College brochures piling up, each promising some bright future if only I picked their program. And so you choose. You pick a college, a university. You work late nights studying, you drag yourself to lectures, you collect the degree that’s supposed to be your golden ticket. But here’s the thing no one wants to talk about: even if you have a good degree, it doesn’t guarantee you’ll earn much. I’ve seen people with no degrees, no college, earning more than those who spent years in classrooms and thousands in tuition fees.
I’ve also seen the darker side — the one people like to pretend doesn’t exist. I knew people whose parents bought their way into school. Paid for every exam to be passed. Paid for professors to “overlook” the mistakes. Some of those people are nurses now. Some are even doctors.
Would you trust them? The answer should be obvious, but then you remember — in many workplaces, especially where there’s a shortage, those people get to stay. Because replacing them would be too hard. Because the system would rather cover up mistakes than admit they put lives in unsafe hands.
It makes you question everything, doesn’t it? The value of hard work. The fairness of the system. The meaning of the word “qualified.”
Career choosing was never just about picking something you love. It’s about navigating a maze where privilege, luck, and connections can matter more than skill. And even when you do everything right, you might still end up standing next to someone who cheated their way in — and realizing the world won’t care.
And that’s the part no one warns you about — the quiet unfairness that sits in the corners of every career. You can sweat, study, and sacrifice, but in the end, the playing field isn’t level. Some climb ladders they never earned, while others are left running in place with blistered feet. And when you see it up close, when you have to work alongside those who faked their way in, you can’t help but wonder: maybe the hardest part of choosing a career isn’t deciding what you want to do — it’s learning how much of the system is built to break you.
