By Goh Wen Zhong

DO YOU remember the first day you started your career? I won't forget mine in a hurry - it was Sept 15 this year, better known as Meltdown Monday.

It was a very hollow feeling indeed: the excitement of finally embarking on a career as a corporate lawyer, drained by the consciousness of that job's dependence on the health of the global economy.

It is interesting how investments and seemingly conservative choices can go belly-up in a matter of days.

I was fortunate enough to be able to invest in a decent education that I thought would give me a leg-up in my career. Pre-graduation, I thought I had made a secure choice by joining a highly regarded law firm with more than 1,000 lawyers worldwide.

How wrong I was. In an economic crisis, almost no one is bulletproof. It was a sobering experience to tear up carefully constructed plans, and redraw them with another variable - redundancy.

It's not something a fresh graduate normally contemplates, yet it has become very real. I know at least five Singaporean university mates whose jobs evaporated with Meltdown Monday.

One gets a real sense of the disappointment and resignation when they speak of future plans. But surprisingly, their foremost thoughts were not of their own prospects, but how their job loss would affect people around them.

One was worried about leaving his housemates to replace him with someone else because he now had to move out. Another worried about not being able to support her elderly parents.

And I can identify with their thoughts - financially and emotionally. I have invested much in starting my professional life in London. My worst fear is that I will have to start all over from scratch. But fear cannot control our lives.

More than ever, we have to remain optimistic. It's at least one way in which I can remain focused and concentrate on doing the best job I can - and I think that will go a long way towards saving my job.

And if that isn't enough, I guess I can find comfort in the fact that I am still young enough to catch up, eventually.

The writer, 26, is working as a lawyer in London

This article was first published in The Straits Times on 15 Dec, 2008.