Since this is intended for students, may I start by asking as to on what basis did you make a decision to join the course you are in, be it architecture or engineering or law? Did you join because your parents decided for you (an imposed decision) or did you join because your friends were also joining it (a group decision)? Or was it a decision taken by you based on comparative earning potential of various fields available to you (an independent decision)? Still another possibility would be that this was the only offer made to you by the University as per your position in the merit list (default choice). Finally, was it a pure and simple impulsive decision? Do spend some time to put it in any one of the categories I have listed, before we move ahead. It could be that there are more of such categories also.
So how do we make decisions? We keep making decisions in our life regularly, some of which are routine in nature and affect our life for a short time while there are others which are crucial for the future course from a long term perspective. A decision taken in the present is going to lead to certain end results or goals. As the future is unknown, which may be as you expected when the decision was taken or may help only partly or not at all. Whichever way it is, the outcome is almost always dependent on your decision making process, and not your luck or fate.
As you would see a decision process has so many linkages and sub processes. At the heart of it is information available with you. Information would be about the choices available, about the means or ability, that is, resources available to pursue the goals and information about how achieving such goals will help to make your life better, or achieve higher life goals, is what is going to determine your decision. For example, in career choices, while making a choice about a course to be pursued, you must know what all courses are available, how much do they cost, what duration, and what are chances of employability after you complete it. Some could result in significant enhancement to social prestige or personal passion. Your final decision will be some kind of mix which you mentally feel is the best deal in the circumstances, some kind of weighted average, what we may call optimization of these constraints.
So information being key to decision making, the soundness of the decision will depend on the quality and quantity of information. A hearsay is obviously bad information, while your doctor dad telling you about prospects of the medical profession is first hand and first rate information. A relative who has just cleared his civil services exams may be source of how to ace the exams but not necessary about the future prospects, Similarly someone who has spent a few weeks in Delhi University may not be able to give you enough information about crucial aspects like hostel accommodation there than one who has his post graduate from there, (unless the latter passed out couple of decades back, like me). Moral of the story is that you must have a good amount of information and a good source for making a decision.
Much before you process the information, you need to make a judgment about both these aspects. Future being uncertain you never know what decision will imply. It is possible that some of your impulsive decisions in the past have turned out to be correct but the probability that such things happening is pretty low mathematically. Unless these are concerning mundane affairs, the majority of decisions are irreversible. Even if possible, change of choices at a later stage means lost time, energy and money.
Therefore, it needs to be made a practice that all major decisions of life, say career, housing, job etc. (even marriage, if you like) should be your informed decisions, that is, they should be based on maximum, and good quality information and do take into account, your requirements/goals and constraints. You can handle your future better that way.
Ashwani Mehta