With youth: What is professionalism?

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Question (Q): What is the meaning of being a professional?

Acharya Prashant (AP): What is professionalism all about? Is it just about serving your profession with excellence or is it something more than that? Whenever we hear the word ‘professional’, an image comes to mind. Is professionalism that image?

Clearly, there are two layers to this question.

One: Can professionalism be defined by a certain code of conduct, a certain personality, or a certain way of carrying yourself? That is the first part and that is how most of us know professionals to be. So this first layer is very important. Is professionalism about that?

Two: It is about the profession itself. If professionalism is all about being excellent, then the question is, ‘Being excellent in which profession?’

Let’s look at the first layer.

What do you do when you walk into an interview room? You start wearing clothes that look like the clothes of a professional. Right? You aren’t a professional yet; but because most of us have confused professionalism with the image of a professional, so we think professionalism is nothing but this image. You talk in a particular manner, that is called…