I meeting a girl from a middle class
family in Gampaha, who has 4 A’s in last August, A level examination. She wants
advise on what to do, hence and her first choice is to go to University in Sri
Lanka, as she can get into all courses that are relevant to the subjects that
she took. The As are in English, French, Greeko Roman Civilization and
Political Science. Her parents are not that well educated and so are not in a
position to advise her on what to do.
I DON’T WANT HER TO TURN INTO AN
UNEMPLOYED GRADUATE as in my previous blog entry, God forbid!
She can speak Italian and has lived in
Italy, and Switzerland. Her father had got some work in both those countries
and is self made, travelling there on a business venture. She got all A’s in O
levels in a small local school in Mahara. I believe it is the Foreign Service
that she would like to enter eventually.
If she applies to get into University,
she will not start till early next year. She would complete her first degree if
all goes according to schedule without interruption, something that is
uncertain in 2020 at the earliest, and convocation in 2021. In addition, the
course syllabus would NOT have been updated for a couple of decades, making
most of her instruction of no current practical use. The availability of
periodicals in the library or access to journals on line from international
sources will also be limited in this situation.
I
am suggesting she does a degree in International Relations at a University in
the USA, firstly by following 2 years here in Sri Lanka through an affiliated
Private College such as ANC and then finish her degree in the US. She can, if
she does well, get a full scholarship to do her Masters at a prestigious US
institution, so that by 2021, she will be able to join the Sri Lanka Foreign
Service, if she still feels that is what she wants to do by then, and not been bagged
by some better offer in the USA!
She is handicapped in that she does not
have a social background like I have in being able to meet with current serving
and retired diplomats and Ministers in the Foreign Ministry, to guide her in
the best choice she should make, on mapping her potential to suit Sri Lanka, to
develop, foreign service officers of caliber to represent Sri Lanka around the
world, a DIRE DIRE need of the hour and I do not believe is being done even
today, to train our future foreign service carder. I will try and arrange for her
to meet some of our past stars of the FS.
No comments:
Post a Comment