Degree choice Q&A: Light Blue Skies' options

I have said this before and I'll say it again: I love answering your questions! Today's question is from my reader Light Blue Skies (I shall shorten that to LBS in this article okay?) who asked me:

Light blue skies 25 December 2013 14:03

You really enlightened me with your blog. Can you tell me what can I do with a political science degree? Thanks.

I intend to study Political Science at NUS.I am considering Political Science because I really love analyzing current events and history, and for that, I have an interest in politics and government so I have an interest in Political science. My third choice would be sociology because I find it interesting to analyze people and their behavior.

I want to be a journalist but Singapore lacks press freedom as well so I don't think I will enjoy being a journalist in Singapore. Btw my parents really hate it when I comment on Singapore politics because somehow I am be marked for life if I do so. I have thought of migration to fulfill my dreams but there are probably thousands of job applicants like me fighting for the same job and as a foreigner, I will not have an advantage over them.

I have thought of giving up my dream as a journalist but I do know know where I can apply my passion for analyzing sources, understanding and writing about them into any other job. 

OK that's plenty of food for thought LBS and thanks for that question. It is actually a very interesting question because I have been there myself years ago - I remember being a student at VJC all those years ago thinking, oh damn, now what? What university should I go to, what degree should I choose, what career options will I have? My parents weren't any help when it came to career advice and I can feel that LBS is in the same situation! This is why I am so glad I am in a position to help LBS - so for what's it's worth, here's my take on the issue.

Now forgive me if it seems like I am not directly answering your questions but I promise you I will get to the bottom of the matter by the end of this post. My initial thoughts when I read your comment was, "you're not asking the right question." In an ideal world, you should be know what you want to do in the long run - you should be able to answer this question, "picture yourself on your 30th birthday - what kind of career will you have then? What kind of company will you be working for? What kind of money would you like to be earning? What would you have achieved by that milestone?" Once you have answered those questions, then I would say, "right, you need to select a degree which will help you get to where you want to be, your choice of degree has to be made in that context." 

Do you have the right degree?

Of course, if you knew the answer to that question of what kind of career you want, then it would make life a lot easier - but reality is often a lot more complex and messy. At the age of 18, I only had some vague idea about what I would like to do. I had to change career paths a few times in my 20s - I simply didn't know what I wanted to do and there was a lot of trial and error in finding out what I didn't want to do in order to discover what I want to do by process of elimination. I suppose it is a blessing in disguise that I am by nature a very adaptable person and a quick learner, so I am more than happy to be jump on a different career ladder and face a steep learning curve if necessary (whilst some people would find that challenge just too daunting). So yeah, it is perfectly okay to say, "I don't quite know what I want to do or am going to do yet - I will figure it out in due course. In the meantime, I need to go to university and do a degree that will serve me well in a wider context, so I can keep my options open for now." 

So back to LBS, you need to consider this: there are things we like to do, but a job involves us being paid to provide a service. I can probably list you many things that I enjoy doing (and am good at) but I have to consider if I want to make a career out of it - let me give you an example. I was a very good gymnast when I was younger (I still enjoy it today, see video below) - I have even gone on to get my coaching qualification so I am now a qualified gymnastics coach. However, I am not prepared to go into coaching full time because the money is just not good. It is however, something I will keep a part of my life but I am just not going to depend on it to pay my bills nor am I going to base my career on it. There will be things like that in your which you may enjoy but you will not turn into a career. 

Here's the bad news: you may love analyzing current events and history - but will someone pay you to do that for a living? In Singapore, that is tricky and highly unlikely. There are only so many newspapers in Singapore which will hire full time journalists - Straits Times, Today, New Paper, Business Times and My Paper. Then you have to think about writing in Mandarin, Tamil or Malay if you are unable to get a job as a journalist with one of those main English language newspapers. The number of magazines with any kind of political content is negligible - when was the last time you actually read a serious piece about politics in 8 Days, Female or Singapore Tatler? The fact is, these magazines focus mainly on a certain area of interest (motoring, fashion, sports, health, travel, entertainment, parenting etc) and from the list I found here, none of them are specifically about politics and even if a magazine like The Asian Banker Journal or Expat Living may once in a while publish an article about politics, they are simply not going to hire a full time political analyst to write articles about politics/current affairs for them.  There simply is no market for it in Singapore - it is not what the locals want to read about. This is a simple function of supply and demand. 

Even if you can get a job with say, the Straits Times, anything you write will be highly controlled by your editor and anything that is anti-government or anti-PAP is going to be censored. This is Singapore, anything within the SPH umbrella is going to be pretty much the mouthpiece of the government and this is unlikely to change in your lifetime. Let's get real here. So let me be harsh and brutally honest: you're totally barking up the wrong tree in terms of looking at political journalism in Singapore. It's not going to happen. In Singapore, yes there is the alternative media space where bloggers and activists say what they want on the internet and criticize the government if they wish - there's nothing to stop you from participating in Singaporean alternative media LBS. However, none of us involved in the Singaporean alternative media space make a living from it - if you want to make journalism your career, you will have to work for someone like the Straits Times or New Paper and accept their working conditions. 

Let's say you are willing to work for SPH and accept their editorial conditions and censorship, how many political writers can they realistically employ? There are five main English newspapers in Singapore, how many jobs are there? I spoke to a friend of mine who works at TNP and his reply was, "The TNP is a tabloid, we don't have a political desk, we leave the serious political debates to ST. Likewise for My Paper and Business Times, My Paper is very light on news content and Business Times steers clear of politics - it is just all about business. I don't know about Today but they're part of MediaCorp anyway so it's not like they're independent. I don't know exactly how big ST's political desk is - the political editor there is Warren Fernandez, he is also the overall editor in charge.The number of ST journalists working on political stories is likely to be very small. I can't give you a precise number as ST doesn't publish a full list of their staff online, but it is going to be less than 5 and unless one of them retires, quits or is killed, there are no vacancies."

It is not unheard of for journalists to have internal transfers - so for example,when my sister worked at ST, she started out working on their crime desk but then found it too daunting after she was once threatened by a criminal not to publish his name in the newspaper outside the court. Her photographer colleague was assaulted by a criminal whilst trying to protect her - so she requested a transfer to do something which wouldn't bring her face to face with criminals all the time. After all, she was a journalist, not a crime fighter. She then transferred to work on their health desk, where she dealt with medical professionals instead on health stories and she found going to hospitals a lot less stressful than going to court. So with that in mind, you're also competing with other existing employees of ST who may be waiting for their chance to transfer onto the political desk and have already proven themselves within the organization.

You'll need a lot more than a degree to prove yourself to SPH.

So if you want to work for Mr Warren Fernandez at ST, you must impress him. The man read PPE at Oxford and then got his masters from Harvard - he was a double scholar and intellectually, the man is every Singaporean parent's wet dream: he is not just a scholar, but has clearly proven that he is so much more intelligent than 99% of Singapore. How the hell do you impress a man like that? Well going to Oxford on a scholarship would be a good start - I'm sorry but reading political science at NUS is just not good enough. Tough, I know, but when there are so few vacancies on his team, you have to be amongst the very best in Singapore in order to fight for his attention. I am sorry to be so cruel and blunt but someone has got to break the news to you and I'd rather it be me, because I know the majority of people in life would be too nice to discourage you like that. You'll need a hell of a LOT more than a degree from NUS to impress SPH if you want a job with them - I hope you've something else in your life to make them go, "ooh check out this applicant, she's done something impressive with her life." A degree from NUS is just not enough, okay?

As for working abroad, you have a really defeatist attitude. Please don't admit defeat before even rising to the challenge! Good grief, I remember myself having that attitude when I was at university and then at work, but I proved myself wrong over and over again. Okay, so there may be a couple of things you're not used to culturally, but as long a you're a fast learner, observant and willing to adapt to new working environments, there's nothing to stop you from competing with the best in any country. Heck, even if you do end up working in Singapore, being local doesn't mean that you will automatically fit into the working environment. It is a lot more complex than you think.

That's me working in Belgium in January 2013

You know what my toughest challenge was in terms of trying to fit into a new environment after all my years of working in so many countries around the world? It was during NS, national service (could I just point out please that LBS is female and doesn't need to serve NS).  It was all about being thrown in a totally unfamiliar environment and having to work with people you don't know and don't like - despite the fact that I grew up in Ang Mo Kio and spoke Singlish, Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese and Malay, I still found it hugely challenging in my first year in NS to fit in. Ironically, it taught me the importance of being flexible, adaptable, observant to those around me, so I can mould myself to fit into any kind of working environment - that lesson served me very well years later when I was working in Europe and the Middle East. So yeah, I actually did learn something useful during my national service, how about that?

So LBS, listen carefully. Being local will NOT give you any advantage when it comes into fitting into a Singaporean company because every company is unique in terms of its office politics and it is about learning about the unique circumstances that governs the way an office operates (pecking order, rivalries, how to relate to your boss, how to claim credit for the work you've done, whom you can trust, whom you should be wary of, whom you should form alliances with, keeping your friends close and your enemies closer, that kinda shit). At the end of the day, it is about being good with people and if you have that skill, you can thrive in any company anywhere in the world whether you're in Shanghai, Seattle, Sydney or Singapore. If you're crap with people and are like a bull in a china shop, if you're emotionally autistic, unable to read the emotions of your co-workers, then you will suffer even if you are working in a company that is on the street in Singapore where you grew up. I have already written a lot about working abroad and will be writing more about it shortly, so look out of my latest article on the issue.

That's me during a work trip to Wales last year.

As for working as a journalist abroad, you face the exact same challenges as you do in Singapore. In a city like London, okay we have a lot more English language newspapers but you are also competing with top scholars from UCL, Oxford and Cambridge who are looking to work for them and the competition is equally stiff. The fact that we have a far more liberal atmosphere with more freedom of speech doesn't change the fact that you will be fighting with so many brilliant scholars for the same jobs. What can I suggest? Have you thought about Oxford or Cambridge rather than just settling for NUS? I mean, there's nothing wrong with NUS but if you want to put yourself in a field as competitive as journalism where there are so few jobs (compared to say banking or engineering where there are so many more jobs), then you're shooting yourself in the foot face by going to NUS. If you are narrowing your field down to political journalism in Singapore, woah - there are under ten such jobs available in Singapore compared to thousands of vacancies in banking, teaching, engineering, sales & marketing, media and IT. Okay, my sister went to NUS and did get a job with ST for many years - but that was years ago back in the early 1990s and the population of Singapore back then was much smaller, Singapore is far more competitive today and you need to find a way to outshine the rest of the competition.

SPH gives out undergraduate scholarships to the brightest and best students in Singapore so as to groom them to be excellent journalists - I have a friend who is currently under this scheme and they are extremely generous to her, sending her to one of the top universities in America. If you can get yourself that scholarship (hopefully you will have results that are nothing less than straight As), then you're pretty much guaranteed a fruitful career in journalism in Singapore It is such a brilliant scheme. If not, well, your chances will be extremely slim at best. Oh and my friend who is the scholar was also a former gymnast who represented Singapore internationally for many years (before she was forced into retirement as a result of injury) and she did ace her A levels - so it was this combination of proving herself both academically and outside the context of academia that won her that great SPH scholarship.

Can you stand out from the crowd and rise above the competition?

As for what you can do with a political science degree, well, "not that much" is the honest answer within the context of Singapore. In the UK at least, some people are able to get a career in politics : lobbying, think tanks, QUANGOs, PR for political parties for elections, working directly for political parties, research, the civil service and political journalism - you can find a longer list here. But that is because we have true multi-party politics here and the fight amongst the parties is very intense - there is fierce rivalry and this in turn, generates many jobs!

In Singapore, the situation is very different. There is little political rivalry - the PAP know that they are going to hold on to power no matter what happens, so they don't need a huge PR machine like the political parties in the UK or US - that means far fewer jobs generated. The opposition parties are poorly funded and not very well organized, relying mostly on volunteers as they just cannot afford to hire anyone. There is no shortage of volunteers with the PAP anyway so your chances of getting a paid job related to politics in Singapore is extremely low.

Do we even need a degree then to enter the working world? I don't think so, but my opinion runs contrary to the trend in Singapore, where everyone is desperate for a degree. A degree from NUS will at least prove to employers that you're smart enough to get into NUS and as long as you graduate with a 2:1 (second upper) or first class, it will also prove to them that you're hardworking, tenacious and a willing learner. Allow me to explain what I mean by "a willing learner": doing a social science degree means taking an issue and analyzing and presenting your understanding of the issue in a format that your professors at university will find acceptable. If you do not do things the way they want, they will fail you. For example, any kind of qualitative or quantitative analysis will have to be clearly and neatly presented and would have to meet an acceptable standard, omitting any of basic requirements when it comes to backing up your research is not acceptable. You will also need to cite your references and sources for any case studies you have quoted in a standard format - you cannot just plagiarize or copy from others in your essays and thesis.

What does that prove? It shows that you're capable of following complex instructions! Yeah, just that. But you'll be amazed the number of people I've worked with over the years who cannot follow instructions despite me or the boss repeating the instructions to them over and over again (like how did these people get through university?). Some people just don't listen and don't pay attention and such people won't be able to survive 3 years at university and get good results. By that token, a political science (or any social science) degree from NUS will make you look quite respectable as a job candidate for a range of roles across many different industries.

Can you follow instructions in the office?

Please read this piece which I wrote earlier this year: my degree is irrelevant and useless. Now LBS, I know you're young and eager to learn and it is great that you are so enthusiastic about your education, but allow me to offer you a bitter truth about your education. Don't overestimate what university can do for you - especially if you're going to be studying political science, 99% of it will be totally useless (and I am already being very generous with that figure of 99%). But you need to take it seriously and do well in it anyway just to prove that you're a willing learner who can follow instructions. You're never going to waltz into a job and be asked to apply what you've learnt at university - fuck that, you have to follow instructions and do things the way your boss wants them to be done. You have to keep your head down, learn quickly, adapt yourself to the company and do things their way - you cannot waltz in and proclaim, "you're doing it all wrong people, let me show you what I've learnt at university." Don't even go there...

Okay LBS,so where does this leave us? If you want to pursue your dreams of becoming a journalist in Singapore, then you need to work towards getting on the SPH undergraduate scholarship scheme - that is the golden ticket you need to make your dreams come true. Otherwise, feel free to go ahead and get a social science degree from NUS (sociology, political science etc) with the knowledge that you're extremely unlikely to get any kind of job in politics in Singapore and that this is just a general degree to set you up for the working world. And if you want to work abroad in the future, feel free to do so but please do not ever be your own worst enemy by having such a lousy, defeatist attitude about competing with anyone. Sorry if this sounds harsh LBS, but that's the kind of stupid bullshit that I've heard too many Singaporeans come up with - admitting defeat even before going to battle. You must not ever allow yourself to give in to this kind of pessimistic, defeatist bullshit before even facing a challenge. Having this super fierce, competitive attitude may have made me come across as obnoxious, proud and arrogant to many, but what is the alternative - to have a defeatist loser's attitude? Come on LBS, please lah, you know you can do better than that.

Do you have the right attitude to take on life's challenges?

As I am huge fan of K-culture, allow me to finish on a Korean note. As they say in Konglish (Korean-English), "Fighting/Hwaiting/Paiting!" That's the Korean equivalent of 加油 - yeah they took an English word but as there's no 'F' sound in Korean, it often comes out as Hwaiting (or sometimes Paiting) instead. It is something they shout to encourage someone who is facing a challenge, "HWAITING!!" And this is what I am saying to you as well LBS, I want you to be Hwaiting all the way to make your dreams come true and whether it is going for the SPH scholarship or working abroad, I want you to believe in yourself and not give in to any kind of defeatist attitude. Please let me know what you think LBS. Perhaps you were not encouraged enough as a child (LOL, tell me about it, I had Singaporean parents too) but for what it's worth, allow me to encourage you to follow your dreams in 2014. Hwaiting all the way!!