Hey Reader,
My life has changed drastically over the last few years. I moved from a small village in Nepal to Kathmandu, and now, I am in New York. To an outsider, it looks like a straight line of remarkable progress. But all of this happened for one reason: education.
People often ask why I came to the United States when I could have stayed with my family and studied back home. It is easy to assume it was a matter of lifestyle or desire. But the truth is, for me, it wasn’t a “want.” It was a need. Knowing the immense sacrifices my parents made to educate me, mediocrity was never an option. I had to take the chance to make the absolute best of my life.
I am here now, and reality looks much different than the dream. But this article is not about me. It is about someone else—a “She.” Consider this a work of fiction heavily inspired by real events and real lives.
She was a star student in middle and high school. Just like me, she wanted to maximize her potential. Even though she knew her parents could not support her financially, she made the brave decision to come to the US.
Initially, her plan was simple: go to school, work an on-campus job to manage her expenses, and study. But within a month of landing, reality set in. On-campus jobs were a mirage; there were too many desperate students and too few openings. A major structural hurdle was that international students do not qualify for the federal work-study program. If a university department wants to hire an international student, they have to pay them directly from their own tight institutional budgets.
Watching the savings she arrived with rapidly dwindle, she had to make a choice. To survive, she found a job that paid in cash. A girl who had spent her entire life wrapped in the safety and affection of her parents was suddenly spending her nights working in a commercial kitchen, accumulating painful burn marks on her arms.
A few months later, the floor gave way. Her father suffered a heart attack back home. Though he thankfully recovered, he was left unable to work. Overnight, she became the sole breadwinner for her family. She had to support herself in one of the most expensive cities in the world, pay a tuition rate that increased every year, and send money back home to support her mother, her younger brother, and her father. She had no other option.
With that crushing responsibility, her hours skyrocketed. She began working 80 to 90 hours a week, every single week, pushing through multiple 12-to-14-hour shifts. At the same time, she carried a heavy load of 16 to 18 academic credits per semester. She had to maintain her high GPA; losing her scholarships meant losing her legal status.
She lived this relentless cycle for four years straight. There was no work-life balance—only work. She didn’t get to build a community of friends, make wonderful university memories, or travel. She couldn’t afford to.
Now, she is graduating. But the finish line has brought a new kind of panic. She wasn’t able to secure a corporate internship related to her major because companies are actively avoiding hiring international students due to the restrictive policies of the current administration.
Worse, she cannot even accept a basic survival job now; immigration laws dictate that her employment must be directly related to her degree. Yet, she cannot tell employers the truth about why her resume lacks prior internships, because all the grueling labor she did to keep her family alive was strictly off the books. As a backup, she applied to multiple Master’s programs, but she is still waiting, facing nothing but silence.
Upon graduation, the clock starts. An international student has exactly 60 days to find a qualifying job or secure a seat in a graduate program to extend their visa. If the timer hits zero, she must leave the country.
She feels that going back home without corporate work experience will make her a disappointment to her family and her relatives. It is easy for outsiders to argue that the opinions of others do not matter. But in our culture, they do. For her and for her family, it matters deeply.
So, what do you do when you are trapped in a system like this? You might suggest she should have started a side-hustle or a freelance business, but as an international student, that is legally forbidden.
Circumstances have pushed her to an edge where the countdown has begun, and there is absolutely no certainty of what comes next. This is the unseen, exhausting reality of the international student dream in America.
I will see you next week.
Warmly,
Suraj
If you'd like to hear more from me, here's my YouTube channel where I share lessons, experiments, tools, and resources to make life just a little better.
