5 Things You Can Do After You ORD
After 2 years, the day that you have waited for is finally here: ORD.
You will finally regain your "freedom” and the thought of not needing to perform guard duties or signing the “extras” will most probably make you so excited that you may have forgotten to plan your future.
Not to worry, we have compiled the top 5 things you can do after your ORD from a survey of NS men in our school (some who have regretted not doing them) so that you can choose what suits you best.
1) Go Rest
Finally, your 2-year of servicing in the army has ended and the last thing you want to do is to do ANYTHING.
Many in the survey said they will choose to rest properly and decide what to do next instead of jumping straight into a job.
Just take your time, rest at home and think about what do you want in life before starting your next 40+ years of working.
There is no need to panic when your friends are starting on their new jobs and you are still jobless. The market has a huge demand for entry-level positions.
2) Go Work
The most common thing is to look for a job right after completing your NS so that your income stream will not end the day you get your pink identity card back.
Most will try to look for a job closest to their education discipline rather than what they enjoy doing in life. This is to ensure you have a higher “hit-rate” in clinching that employment contract.
However, based on our survey, many of them regretted not pursuing what they enjoy doing for a job. This is because the first job was the time when you have almost zero commitment and can accept a lower-paying job and thus, increasing your chances of getting into whatever industry you may want to try your hands on.
Moving forward, if you take up a job you don’t enjoy as a hobby, you will most probably find it very difficult to jump out of that industry by the time you realised that life is too short to do what you dislike, forever.
The recommendation is to find a job you like rather than a job that pays you higher initially. The difference in salary will be narrowed in the long road ahead.
3) Go Travel
Your well-deserved long vacation of course. You have been stuck in a place where you do not want to be for the past 2 years and now is the time to travel for as long as you want to.
Go plan a trip or even travel without an itinerary with a friend. Not going for a long backpacking trip is at the top of the list of regrets in the survey.
Go backpacking for an unknown period of time is most probably what you should do when you still do not have many commitments, be it in work or for family. If you missed this chance, you may never have one again once you have started working or a family.
4) Go Study
Some have already registered and got themselves a place in a local university. Some intend to look for a private school only after their army stint.
Whatever it is, going back to the classroom may be a good idea when you are still young and have the energy to study.
Our survey tells us that, if given a choice again for some, they will go for a part-time course instead of a full time one.
This is because it can actually be a terrible waste of time to study full time again when you have already spent 2 years in the army. You need all the time to “catch up” with those who did not have to serve the army and another 3-4 years studying full time doesn’t seem like a good solution.
This is even more so when you are not going for a degree but for a higher NITEC or diploma. That is even more years wasted doing something you can achieve doing part-time in much lesser time.
5) Go Be An Entrepreneur
You know what you want and can (still) afford to fail.
Statistics show that most entrepreneurs will fail on their first few attempts and so it is always good to fail young in order to learn from the mistakes and become better on your next venture.
Think along the line of what you are good at and/or what you enjoy doing. That will keep you going for a longer period of time as everyone knows entrepreneurship is a long and lonely road where much perseverance and discipline is needed.
You may want to acquire some marketing and design skills before you start or when you are starting so as to save on the cost of hiring other designers to design/sell your products.
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