Long time since I have blogged. Almost a week I guess!! Well I have been caught up with so much work which mainly comprises of Attending Classes, Do Home Work, Study, Cook, Manage Home, Clean, Shop and last but not the least hunt for a job in campus.
A small introduction about work : If you are holding a F-1 Visa, you are allowed to work for 20 hours per week, within the campus premises as long as you are enrolled as a full time student for your degree.
From day 1, in fact day -30 may be I was on the outlook for a part time job here at LSU. The reasons are very obvious
1. I am paying humongous amount of fees, especially because I am doing my MBA!!!! I want to lessen my education loan burden.
2. Apart from 19 Hours of class every week, the rest of the time is for myself. I know after the initial busy schedule of getting used to being independent, at some point I might get time for myself and start feeling home sick
3. I think a zillion times even before I buy a basic fruit here, because of the Rupees to Dollar conversion that happens automatically in my brains!!!
4. Last but not the least any kind of work will always helps build your resume!!!
There might be some more reasons but I restrict myself to these four ;-)
From the very next day I landed in Baton Rouge, Pri & I have hunted for job like crazy!!!
Some statistics :
I have emailed close to 100 people ( some veterinary school included ;-) ), went door to door office at some 10 places, have had job openings topic deliberately discussed with anyone I meet at LSU, have taken multiple copies of multiple versions of my resume depending on the job I am applying to, keep refreshing my g-mail in case I get a call for interview. But, all was not well and it ached my heart even more when I quit 2 companies in a span of 4 months and came here :-P. Apart from this there was the initial peer pressure that everyone else has some kind of a financial help!!! After a week, I made sure this did not effect me, and I was happy because I was successful in doing so. Yet, I never bothered to unsubscribe from Naukri, Monter etc [ Job search Sites in India]. This is because it always made me feel better, that I had a call for an interview!!!, forget the fact that I wouldn't be able to attend one!! :-P
So after 3-4 weeks of job hunting the information I got was :
There are 4 types of job which F-1 visa holders can get into
1. Research Assistant RA -> You do some research work within your department and work for a professor who is doing some thesis etc.
2. Teaching Assistant TA -> You do most of the admin work for the professor. Such as, correcting papers, assigning Home work to his students, try to solve their doubts etc.
3. Graduate Assistant GA -> You can work in any department irrespective of your field of study. And based on the openings, you need to learn the job and work. For example a Civil Engineering student is a GA, who does web design :-)
The above mentioned jobs are advantageous, since you get a fee wavier ( % depends ), and some minimum salary which you can use for small comforts like flip flops, hair oil etc in my case:-)
The last one is called
4. Student Worker : This job, will just pay you on hourly basis depending on the work you do and no fee waiver will be imposed! Some jobs that belong to this category are
a. Tutor
b. Dining Place Helper
c. Lab Assistant to name a few.
Well, by the end of this blog I hope you guys have a descent idea about the job options for a F-1 and how difficult it is to get a part time job in the 1st place!!!
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