Prof. Nevzat Tarhan gathered with Ahıska Turkish youth who will make their preferences

President of Üsküdar University, Psychiatrist Prof. Nevzat Tarhan met with Ahıska Turks in Türkiye. In the program of the World Union of Ahıska Turks Youth Branches (DATÜB) hosted by Üsküdar University, Tarhan shared important remarks under the title “Right Profession Choice and Effective Career Planning”. Noting that experienced people’s experience must be benefited from, Tarhan stated that the ideal is to learn from other’s experiences.

The interview, which was held at Üsküdar University Nermin Tarhan Conference Hall, attracted the attention of Ahıska Turks living in Türkiye. NGO executives also attended the meeting, where the candidates who took the university exam and were on the eve of preference showed a great interest.

"We will not forget the past, but we will look at the future"

Prof. Nevzat Tarhan started his speech by drawing attention to the 79th anniversary of the deportation of the Ahıska Turks and pointed out the need to learn from the past and the importance of a sense of responsibility. Tarhan said that "We will learn lessons from the past, they are our history. For example, the Japanese took their children from Nagasaki to Hiroshima at the elementary school level and said ‘Look, we lost like this when we had World War II. There are facts of life, life is not just always sunny, and we have experienced such realities.’. With the feeling that we owe a debt to our ancestors in the past, a sense of responsibility is awakened in young people. Especially today's young people are trying to be raised egocentric due to the perspective brought by modernism about the responsibility for the past. There is a philosophy imposed by popular culture called 'live your life, break your chains, tear down the walls, live according to your head'. We need to fill these gaps in our education system. We will not forget the past, but we will look to the future. Therefore, this activity of yours is worth diamonds and it is important for these young people to come here in this context. We are happy if we can help them to make the right choice.".

The candidate needs to benefit from experienced people...

Prof. Nevzat Tarhan pointed out that candidates should definitely benefit from experienced people; and said that "The Preference Period is one of the most confusing periods for young people. There are two important decisions that a person will make in life; one is the choice of profession and the other is the choice of spouse. Since, perhaps, forty years of the person will pass in line with this decision, how does one make the right decision here? One may not be able to see everything themselves. The person has their own strengths, weaknesses... They have their own personal characteristics... Then there are the characteristics of the profession which the person wants to choose. That profession has its pros and cons. There are experience and observation of those who do that profession... The person needs to be able to make the connection between their personal characteristics and the profession they want to do. Therefore, it is important to benefit from experienced people here. For this reason, faculties of education have opened a branch of science called profession choice specialization in recent years. In other words, it is not a department related to the choice of profession, but it is a branch of science? There is a separate lesson on choosing the right profession. When we look at the statistics, we see that 30-40 percent of the students who enter the university want to change departments and fields by taking the exams again. To summarize, they are not satisfied with their preferences, their fields... This means that a third of them will take the exam again next year. If one chooses the field they does not want, they enter from the additional quota, the score does not become invalid. At least it is more advantageous because the person has such advantages as not losing a year. The best preference consultants and preference robots know this."

"The biggest capital is trust"

Tarhan mentioned that it is not necessary to be profitable in the short term, but to be profitable in the medium to long term and said that "The most important truths of this time, the most important currency is trust. The biggest capital is trust. To build trust, we need to be open, transparent and honest. Thus, I think honesty has become a virtue in Türkiye. In fact, everyone should have it. All these are human characteristics. Being self-interested is profitable in the short term, but being virtuous is profitable in the medium to long term. We need to aim for the medium-long term, not to be profitable in the short term. This is my most important advice to young people. A person with such a philosophy of life sets their goal correctly. In life, you will be our target pyramid, and you will have the motivation to mobilize yourself. At the top of the target pyramid will be a person's pyramid of purpose and meaning, as in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. There will be abstract goals at the top of life, for example, what kind of person do I want to be when I reach the end of my life, what do I want to write on my gravestone, how do I want to be remembered? If we have such an abstract goal, if someone leads us to a bad side, if they say, 'Lie, slap this person, do that,' if you have an abstract goal like being a good person in your goal, you can automatically say no."

It is not the traumas themselves, but it is the way we handle them that is a threat."

Prof. Nevzat Tarhan mentioned that the person who does not fall into despair and pessimism turns trauma into gain. Tarhan stated that "Traumas themselves are not a threat. The way we handle traumas is threatening because trauma is an inevitable thing in life. No one's life is like a straight line. It is unrealistic to think of a life without trauma. It would be nice but not possible. The rules of creation are not like that. Every danger has two dimensions. There is a threat dimension and an opportunity dimension. Let's say people who focus on the threat dimension of a trauma who do not see the opportunity dimension; 'Why did this happen? I wish it did not happen! Why did they do that? This is unfair' and if a person always thinks externally, always blaming others, if one gets into such a habit, a person is wasting themselves. If they think as ‘This trauma is a situation in my life that I cannot prevent, that I cannot handle, that I cannot foresee. What should I do against this trauma? What is the instructive dimension of this trauma for me? What is the size of the opportunity?' The most important thing for that to think about this is not to fall into despair and pessimism. The person who does not fall into despair and pessimism turns trauma into gain. We then call that trauma as the trauma that develops. The person suffers, but after that the more this person suffers, the more their abilities develop, the further they go. In other words, those traumas that rival them, and give them psychological strength and ego strength. With those gains, a person becomes more resilient in life events.”.

"The ideal is to learn from the experiences of others"

Underlining that one of the skills of the 21st century for life success is endurance training, Tarhan said that "Right now, one of the most important 21st century skills in life success is patience in our culture, which we call resilience training, that is, psychological resilience. Therefore, to be patient is not to stand aside and wait like that. This is passive patience. Then, there is active patience, that is, patience on the move. You set a goal. You are actively patient on your way to your goal. On the way to the goal, you take the positive things and say no to the negative things. In other words, you are not oriented towards your pleasures, but towards your goal. This patience is a meditative act. And in fact, this patience is not to wait, to slow down but to obey the speed and rhythm of nature. Life is like riding a bike. If you know where to accelerate and where to slow down, you will go without tumbling down. If you pedal where you should not, you will fall. This needs to be learned in life as well. It is a skill. We will constantly make mistakes in life, we will learn. Standard learning is learning by trial and error, which most people do. You make a mistake, you learn a lesson, you do not do it again. This is the learning of the average person. The learning of the intelligent person is that you make a mistake, and you learn from the mistakes of others without expecting to make any mistakes. You read success stories, and you listen to life stories. You learn from their experiences, and you make the right decisions without going down the path of trial and error. You make fewer mistakes, and the ideal is to learn from the experiences of others.".

Üsküdar News Agency (ÜNA)