R U A Certified Slave?

Each day I open my official mailbox all I can see is the constant reminder that am in place or world where I don’t belong.. Only 5 weeks to go complete your certification…These certifications are nothing but a proof that I am well aware of my business unit and technology.. I know I can some how manage to clear them, by merely going through the dumps (previous years papers)… I still don’t understand how my fellow employees manage to remember all the questions of an exam (along with the options..)..Maybe they could have been fed with the best chavanprash during their childhood…however they do is immaterial… any ways a BIG THANKS to them… If not for them how will ppl like me manage their way out.. As I Belong to the lazy Category and am not going to take the pain of going through each page of the 100 pages Pdfs that am supposed to be learning… But the BIG Q remains unanswered… Am truly certified for the purpose I was hired for? How far am I competent? Not that I under estimate myself…but my doubt is that how good am I at this job…. The job of a “software professional”.. Working for an year I can without any bit of doubt say that I have become a knave to this BIG IT FIRM am working for…I do all my work. Just cause my conscience should not prick me in the future…I should not look back at the this tenure of my life and feel like a complete looser… and hence I put all that it takes to complete my work before the deadline (that’s an over statement, generally it is on the D DAY)…at times it ends up taking all my leisure time…as I end up working more than the prescribed 9.10 hrs. Some kind of Company Policy.. It can’t be 9.05 hrs also… One of the manager said, “U folks have to clock in 9.10 hrs… Else u will be sacked..” In this recession time, when I open my inbox with fingers crossed, cause I have this constant reoccurring nightmare of seeing my TERMINATION LETTER.. So with fear in my mind… I Give my 100 percent in spite of myself.. With the kind of person am… I don’t like working after the prescribed time slot.. And I have my own self-made crazy explanations for all this…1) Working late gives me a feeling of a bloody fool… a person who is not good enough to complete her work on time…2) I believe that life is lived once.. So enjoy it as if you don’t live till tomorrow…3) Working and living on your own… so What is missing in your present phase of life is Family.. And now my friends are my family.. So I prefer to spend time talking to them…In spite of all the odds, I still end up working late (and this late hours come ONCE IN A BLUE MOON)… But I Still wonder.. The question that iterates through an infinite loop in my mind is –“how far is it worth all the pain? Am I doing justice to my job? Above all am I doing justice to myself?”In this long year of all work and seldom fun phase of my life.. What have I learnt? How good am in the technology am working? I personally feel if given a basic Computer knowledge (which even a kid has now) and GOOGLE any average TOM DICK AND HARRY can code… any doubt? Readymade foolproof tested solutions are available in the WWW World… Where you make your mark is in some small not so complicated logic you write.. Back in my college days.. I still remember I was so bad in Computers.. I was not like those techies… who knew all the damn shortcuts of the computer.. I was a novice.. You ask me What is ur PC’s configuration.. I would be blank.. As I have never stepped into that area. The whole credit can be attributed to my brother. He knew it all right from the scratch.. I still remember those days when I used to gape at him while dismantling the CPU to work on something which he used to call “THE MOTHER BOARD”*All I Did was standing there perplexed… as the whole thing seemed beyond my level..*. I was this ignorant person who knew nothing about computer.. From that person who did not know the nuance of coding or computer to what am right now Has been a roller coaster ride.. A lot of heart breaks… many disappointments… stress that would eat me up… times when I forgot to smile… times when I forgot to celebrate my small success (let be the silliest thing I got on my screen for the first time).. All that I see around me is the competition to reach to the TOP… in this rat race to make a position I have forgotten how to live….PPL say we work for life…but where does the whole concept of life exist when u just don’t live…u r nothing more than the machine…which starts its processing at 8.30 am and continues till 6.00 am…even machines are more luckier than us…as they can hang themselves…and no one questions them…but we even a slight delay in the deliverables…we know what we r going to face…we have to complete our work…in spite of the fact that its human to be lazy or not in a mood certain days…but all these can happen only in the weekdays…those small weekdays…which are just available to do what we want to…cause of this undue pressure…most of us spend the weekends doing nothing other than “Lazing” around at home sweet home…These mundane days, weeks, months and years…make this sect of people nothing more than computer itself…. In Spite of all this I have this wide smile on my face on the month end… I check my bank account to see the huge lump of money I get… Again this salary hikes is different for different ppl… if u fare really well.. You have an amazing pay… else you are one among those thousands… you got to make your position some how… And the criterions to make yourself eligible for the BIG MONEY is-a) Work as though work is the only thing u know to do… If you are confronted with the question “ A Romantic dinner with the gal of your life or the pending work?” Without a second thought your answer ought to be WORK…b) You have a series of exams (famously known as CERTIFICATIONS) a dread to most of them.. You have got 3 tries and you got to score a damn 65 to clear them… Man I have never seen 65 on my scorecards during my Graduation… Now I struggle to get the magic number…c) FUN that word should be an alien to you… People are watching you.. If u have fun than the co-workers prescribed limit than be prepared for all kind of talks…. d) Have this wide smile on your face (though a fake one)… else how can you enter the good books of your peer… In all to reach the top, you have to suppress the individual in you… and wear the magic MASK to win Hearts of PM, PA and also the SEs… Then you get the accolades, the not so deserved appraisals and a gang of “FAIR WEATHERED FRIENDS”… In this whole process of seasoning to get tuned to the corporate world, you are reduced to nothing but a “CERTIFIED SLAVE”…