Education: Passion vs Pragmatism

In an approach to know more about the public's views, our team has conducted a survey to gather results.

In another attempt to learn more about the public's view, our team has also conducted interviews with 2 lecturers from our school.

Candidate name: Mr Yeak Shaw Wen
Temasek Polytechnic IT course coordinator, working in TP going to 10 years

Born in Malaysia, currently Singapore Permanent Resident

Interview title: Education – Passion vs Pragmatism

1) Can you tell me about yourself? (What you enjoy doing? Passion?)

2) Do you choose your choice of studying | working for pragmatic or passion reason?

- Took computer science when young because didn’t have any other choices
- Now teaching IT related subjects because that’s what his trained for
- If stop working for TP, may still be looking for a job related to teaching even though it’s not IT, reason because like to see students learn something useful for their life

2b) If you're jobless, you will still find something related to teaching even though the pay is awesomely low?

o Stated that started teaching with a RM880 a month teaching in KL after he graduated
o Continued working in college he graduated from, next job was also teaching, however 3rd job was not teaching because he had to get to his 4th job, and had no choice but to get some industrial experience
o Teaching in TP is his 4th job

If 2) choice is passion,
3) Why do you pursue your passion? Is there anyone or factor that prompted you to make that choice?

- Enjoying seeing students learning useful things for their life, after starting teaching career, seen many happy faces, many successful individuals, makes him feels that he have serve a good cause in his life, doing something useful in life.
- Father, was a teacher, reason is because he want to do a better job than him

4) Do you think that pursuing of your passion has paid off? Why and why not?

- No end to this path, have seen 27 pointers graduate with gold medal, seen repeaters graduate, seen students found job successfully, doing well in their career, with these, his job has been fruitful.

5) Do you think that passion is dominant over pragmatism nowadays?

- For many people, bread and butter is important, however he is fortunate, not the only sole bread winner of the family, wife has a higher pay than him, so he can continue with his passion. Not everyone is lucky
- As from a teacher point of view, he feels that students nowadays, took up courses they had no choice, based on his own care group
- Taking his care group C195 into consideration, they are highly motivated and mostly chose IT because they believed in IT; however he feels that they may not be that passionate, but under circumstances have to force them to take it.
- Most importantly, they believe they can do well and work hard to make sure they reach their goals and they believe IT is the path to go.

6) Do you have any advice for those people pursuing their own passion?

- Do what you like, if those people have interest in what they are doing, then they are not working, they are just doing something that they like.
- Same goes for pragmatism.

Candidate name: Ms Feng Yeli

Temasek Polytechnic IT School Lecturer

Interview title: Education – Passion vs Pragmatism

1) Can you tell me about yourself? (What you enjoy doing? Passion?)

2) Do you choose your choice of working for pragmatic or passion reason?

Both pragmatic and passion, feels that passion as stand alone, not so simple, yet not so complicated, no distinction between passion or pragmatism, aim for balanced, mainly the job must be of her interest and have some earning power
Interest – have interest in part of the work, (working as IT lecturer, interested in IT development)
Survival – a reasonable income for personal lifestyle
Economic & job marketing environment – During the financial crisis, one cannot heavily depend on the type of job if you are pursuing your own passion. Try out other different type of jobs, if really no choice, go for any one of the jobs that are available and wait for the crisis to turn over. Slowly try out different type of jobs until you get one that you really like and stick with it.
Side: Neutral

3) Do you think that pursuing of your passion has paid off? Why and why not?

- Teaching is still rather new to her, she has accumulated experiences over few months of teaching
- Learn how to communicate well with teenagers
- Know more about local culture

4) Do you think that passion is dominant over pragmatism nowadays?

- Balanced, no side is dominant over any side.
- During early 20s, 30s to 40s, many different people has different focus, people tend to choose

5) Do you have any advice for those people pursuing their own passion?

- Case by case
- When you’re young, there’s financial support, go ahead for passion before the time where you don’t have the chance to go after your own passion.
- If passion is unrealistic, and you need to invest a lot of time in it, neglecting your work, it’s a risk path, so choose wisely, identify interest never choose a job with no interest in it.

6) Do you have any advice for those people pursuing pragmatism?

- Don’t want to give wrong direction
- Low personal interest = tendency to give up
- General advice – for work and for money
- Consider reasonable factors which satisfy your personal interest (which must be acceptable realistic)
Final quote – Luck + hard work = success, you reap what you sow.

We would also like to share with you about a few success stories, click the links below to learn about them and our view on what made them persevere.