Living in Hope

NO SECOND CHANCES Only if you enter life with the requisite competence will you receive your rightful place in it. Being wellequipped and having the technical knowhow are indispensable to personal progress. A senior college teacher once commented to me with considerable bitterness, “There are no second chances in life. Wonderful opportunities to advance myself are coming my way at the moment, but I can’t take advantage of them.” I was rather surprised at this outburst and asked him the reason. “It’s all because I rushed into taking up a job immediately after I had done my B. Sc. You see, I never did my M.Sc. Of course, I always meant to at later stage, but somehow the circumstances were never just right for me to leave work and start studying again.” I had to agree with him that without higher qualifications one cannot aspire to higher things in life. This is unfortunately true of about 99 percent of our society. The early part of one’s life should be devoted to intensive preparation for adult responsibilities, but