MATTHEW TEOH BENG KEAT
BACHELOR OF ARTS (HONS) ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Class of August 2009

After I was through with my final exams, I decided to take a few months break on the advice of a few senior friends of mine who had already graduated. After my convocation which took place 3 months later, I immediately started browsing newspapers and Jobstreet.com for advertisements regarding work. All in all I applied to about 20 different companies ranging from colleges to banks to insurance companies. At this stage, all I cared about was getting a job first, so I applied to whoever was hiring and was not looking for companies that had jobs specifically attuned to my degree. After a month of not getting any response from any company, I saw an advertisement by a company based in KL which was looking for English writers. Naturally, I applied. Two weeks later I got a call from the company asking me to go for the interview.

I agreed to give it a try at first, not expecting that I would get the job, but I did. I was lucky that I manged to find a job in a short span of time (one month), even more so with the current economic downturn. I have heard of many stories from friends about how long they took to get a job, and some of them I know are still looking.

As of now I have been working for three months, and am based in the English Section of the Information and Communication Bureau. My work entails monitoring both the English and Malay media and doing research on the news which are of interest to the Association, writing press statements to the media, writing articles for the bi-monthly magazine, covering events organized by the Association, and updating of the Association?s website. So in a way, I do have a chance to apply what knowledge I have gleaned from UTAR my current work. To my lecturers, you know who you are, a very big thank you!

However, three months is too short a time to assess if I have found the right career, but so far, it has been pretty enjoyable and a great eye-opener for me.