The path less travelled

When students first start thinking about their post-graduation plans, the first instinct is often to stick with what is familiar.  

However, motivated by various factors, three Yale-NUS alumni decided to take a leap of faith and pursue careers in fields different from what they had majored in during their time at the College.  

Samuel Lum (Class of 2017). Image provided by Samuel.  

Samuel Lum (Class of 2017) graduated from Yale-NUS College as a Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) major and is currently working on marketplace strategy and analytics at Shopee. Samuel credits an internship mentor during sophomore year who inspired him to allow his passions to steer his life trajectory. “My manager majored in psychology, but was managing a sizeable quantitative hedge fund. When I asked him how he entered the investment management field without a finance-based qualification, he showed me his bookshelf. It was filled with almost a hundred books on investment strategy,” Samuel said.  

Graham Link (Class of 2017). Image provided by Graham.  

Graham Link (Class of 2017), an Anthropology major, is now a Lead Design Researcher at athenahealth based in the United States. Similar to Samuel, discussions with others along the way helped him to realise that there are many ways to be an anthropologist outside of academia During Graham’s undergraduate and post-graduate journey, he found that the underlying skills of social scientists were extremely valuable in many other industries, especially in design. “I fell into the design world organically through speaking to mentors and practitioners, who helped me realise that the mindsets and methods of anthropology are equally at home in the design studio as in journal articles. Design may not seem an obvious choice for anthropology majors, but today I know more anthropologists working in design than in academia,” he said.  

Ng Hui Lin (Class of 2019). Image provided by Hui Lin.  

Ng Hui Lin (Class of 2019) majored in Physical Sciences at Yale-NUS. However, after graduating from the College, she joined Kyushu National Museum as a Coordinator for International Relations. Hui Lin initially pursued her major out of curiosity, but like Graham decided that academia was not in the cards for her. “With that out of the way, I found it easier to listen to the passing shower of thoughts in the back of my mind about trying something entirely different after graduation. With a bit of luck, that’s exactly what happened and how I came to be where I am now at the museum!” Hui Lin said.  

Hui Lin credits her Yale-NUS experience for motivating her to branch out past her own specialisation, “We are surrounded by professors and administrators who understand the value of an unconventional, non-linear path after college. Being allowed to experiment – and grow up, really – in this way as an undergrad really cemented my belief that we are terribly resilient even when thrown into new, unfamiliar situations,” she reflected.  

In the same vein, Samuel’s exposure to a wide “buffet of courses” at Yale-NUS, allowed him to draw inspiration and craft solutions from different disciplines regardless of his major. “To go through these courses and solve projects efficiently and effectively, I constantly had to be on my toes, to adopt an agile growth mindset, understand the context and tools, search for the answers and add value to them,” he elaborated. 

This diverse academic experience was also what Graham enjoyed most during his time at Yale-NUS. “I owe so much to my Yale-NUS education. I wouldn’t have discovered anthropology if not for the Common Curriculum, and in turn, may never have found the beautiful world of design. I think back with warm nostalgia to the Modern Social Thought module – It has been almost eight years ago now, and I still remember how each class felt like a little tug waking the class up from a dream within a dream. Yale-NUS taught me to love that feeling of disorientation. In trying to regain our bearings, we were forced to question other parts of our lives and peel back the concentric layers, of ‘why?’.  I apply that questioning mindset every day as a design researcher,” Graham remarked. 

Reflecting on their varied career paths, all three alumni shared that while taking a leap of faith can be daunting, it is important to be open to different career options.  

“Be open to taking calculated risks, and stepping out of your comfort zone. A ship in the harbour is safe but that is not what a ship is for,” Samuel said.   

Hui Lin added that, “The world is becoming an incredibly interconnected space, and so even if something that you feel passionately about is for the moment not deemed ‘sensible,’ there is still value in doing it anyway! The things that we find trivial now sometimes have a way of coming back to us when we least expect them to, and often in an oddly useful manner. The path less-travelled can be scary, but be brave and you might find that you’re better off for it!” 

For Graham, his advice to those at a crossroads is that, “Graduating from school marks the end of a long, fairly fixed set of tracks that have guided us so far, but beyond those tracks there are almost infinite paths. The sheer number of paths means that, in reality, most paths are less-travelled. The only way to know what might lie down those paths is by speaking to those who have followed them. You may not want to emulate the paths you hear about exactly, but odds are those stories will give directions to another trailhead that you can make your own.”