News The Economy and Your Future Career FAHIM UDDIN Staff Writer Lately, phrases like “Economy is very bad these days; businesses are shutting down. People are losing jobs and homes,” are heard more frequently than ever before. In regard to this issue, I would like my readers to think: are they part of the problem or solution? It is true that the job market is not the same it used to be five or six years ago. What really happened? I don’t know. I do not want to know. Do you? I just like to focus on what I can do as an individual to make sure my career is secured and the investment (time and money) I am making today in school is guaranteed to give me Return on Investment (ROI) at the end. So should be your focus. Many of our students at UB are from the international community and many cultures overseas make them choose careers and majors based on family or market trends. This can hurt. Let me repeat: this can and will hurt.
You do not have to do what they ask you to do. You do and choose what you want. But here is the catch. Not always will you be able to choose what you like; sometime you will have to make adjustments to your choices based on economics, circumstances, availability of resources and your internal gift. For example, you may have an interest in outer space and want to work in NASA, but do you have enough resources to accomplish that? Are you healthy enough? Will this help you make a living and maintain a family if you have one? At the same time, we know for sure that your gift is logical programming and this can make you a great computer programmer.
Let me conclude: “You must love what you do or you must do what you love.” Find out what your gift is and follow the heart. Choose the career and study major that you think you belong to. Success will follow. Don’t get caught in the wrong career or make poor choices. With such an approach, you will not find the economy bad for yourself. Make your own economy: the product of your hard work, intelligent choices and consistency.
Int'l Students Need to Adopt Safety Tricks Even More Now FAHIM UDDIN Staff Writer In reference to the recent event of a UB Student being killed off campus, this article stresses a few important self-safety points mostly overlooked by our new international students. We realize that part of the responsibility comes on the shoulders of an international student, besides law enforcement and security agencies which do their job to their best. They can only do so much. We need to protect ourselves too. We need to know what we are getting into as a foreigner and must understand new people and cultures very clearly. We must
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avoid unnecessary activities, but focus on our agenda of getting a degree and education at the university. We must not walk into dark streets and bad neighborhoods. We must pay full attention to all pre-cautions and safety tips given to us from time to time. As old students on campus, we must advise and provide safety tips to new students as applicable. Had the victim known the area better and known how to deal with his attacker, he may have been able to defend himself and save his own life. We highly condemn this tragedy and we will remember him in our
prayers. We learn our lesson with this event and we will together make sure this does not happen again in the future to any student/person and to their loving and hopeful parents. We conclude to avoid any opportunity given to bad guys and thus protect ourselves more than we normally do.