The other day I was talking to a student who graduated in August from my school. He is in OPT for almost 75 days now. He is trying his best to find a job but with an economic recession he is not even getting interview calls. He was so sad and telling me “since I have some good friends I am surviving. I don’t have any money to spend nor any work”. I found him very low in confidence and cursing the luck for his inability to find a job all throughout the conversation.
There will be hundreds of graduate students like this from different countries especially from India who may be going through the same state of mind as my friend. They are subjected to so many pressures at the same time – pressure due to the inability to find a job, pressure to make both ends meet with no income, pressure to repay the huge loan they took back from their home country, pressure of returning back to the home country as a loser not having able to find a job even after studying so hard.
I can understand the pain and agony that goes through those students as I also came to US for my studies during the peak of recession. Majority of my friends were struggling to find a job during that time. I have written earlier about the tough life of graduate students and how we all survived it. But I believe this time it is going to be much tougher – mainly due to some changes in the H1B visa numbers and also the recession is widely expected to be worse than the last one. The only ray of hope for a lot of students is the extended Optional Practical Training (OPT) but lot of students can’t take advantage of it as they need to be employed for at least 9 months during their 12-month OPT to get an extension.
