Mumbai, April 23 -- In January 2022, a class nine student from a school in Gurugram met a counsellor seeking guidance on how to get into a top college in the US to study medicine. After laying the groundwork in the first year, the counsellor asked the student to shadow a doctor when she was in class 10. For a reason: the student needed to get up close and personal with blood, guts, warts and faecal matter to understand if these were the sort of delights she wanted to deal with on a daily basis over her career.

As it turned out, the experience made the student unsure about whether to pursue a career as a doctor. She wanted to work in the medical field but wasn't sure about the role. Eventually, with the help of the counsellor and after ev...