People make good decisions and horrible decisions. Making a terrible decision can affect your whole life badly. That’s why old Chinese people always say that a decision shouldn’t be made until the situation has been contemplated seriously three times.
I don’t know how people move on after making a terrible decision, but I am still making up for mine to this day. I have to admit that studying Advertising in China is one of the biggest mistakes in my life. Many people asked me why I got my degree in Advertising. Actually, it was a compromise between the different desires of my parents and mine. I grew up drawing and knew that I wanted to be a designer since I was a little girl. My dream was to study graphic design in Taiwan. However, my parents didn’t want me to study in Taiwan and thought that being a designer wouldn’t make any money. Then they found the nearest university in China that carried a major called Advertising, and thought that it would be the best fit for me. Advertising was a pretty new major in China back then. My dad thought that the major would fulfill both of our wishes because it combines arts and business. I didn’t insist on studying graphic design in Taiwan, and I agreed with my parents thoughtlessly. Back in those days, I was young and a push-over, so I didn’t know that that compromise was going to make a big impact on my life.
I think studying Advertising in China was a bad move because of several reasons:
First of all, my major led me nowhere after I graduated from the university. The advertising industry in Macau totally sucks because of the fierce competition from Hong Kong and China. In Macau, clients either do advertisement through Hong Kong agencies for high-end products or China agencies for low-end products. Therefore, I had to shift my career to other fields. I thought I could apply for marketing jobs because there were some overlapping classes between marketing and advertising, but then I found employers always prefer Marketing major candidates over me. I was totally lost about my career path. I have been a news reporter, hotel receptionist, hotel reservation agent, hostess, and finally, settled down as an office administrator, a position that doesn’t even require a bachelor degree. Isn’t that ironic?
Secondly, it has never been easy for me to look for a job because I lacked the networking in Macau after being away for four years. According to the statistics roughly done by my classmates, because of networking, students who graduated from the University of Macau are more likely to get a job faster than students who graduated in China.
And lastly, I was significantly lacking in the English language after studying in China. Believe it or not, I didn’t have any English education at the university in China for 3 years. Even though I attempted to keep up by studying English myself, there was no way I was able to compete with the students who graduated in Macau when it comes to English level.
Even though I did quite well in my last job as an administrator, I was not happy because it was not what I love and what I am good at. After struggling in the job market for 6 years, I walked away with diverse yet unprofessional experiences and some cash for me to remedy my wrong decision by going back to school to study graphic design. Perhaps it was not a wrong decision and I blame my failure to my parents. But at least I learned that I should never let other people make life decisions for me.
