Life’s gamble

Life can be hard at times for all of us. For us it started when we moved to a new country. It’s not just another country. It’s the United States - a place that people all over the world wishes to come. At the same time, there are thousands of restrictions for immigrants and students like us. Recently, I discovered that countries like Canada, Australia and New Zealand has lesser restrictions for students, their spouses and immigrants. Well, America also had had a permissive immigration system in seventies and eighties. However, it is saturated now, and so the borders are less permeable.

Yet, here we are after four to five years on student visa. A student visa here means an opportunity to study at one of the world’s best academic institutions, but with little opportunity to earn. Universities here are financially difficult for even locals. Compared to them we paid the international tuition with little earnings other than minor campus jobs. Luckily for us there were opportunities for getting tuition remissions and to survive. However, the gamble is about our most precious years of life. Mind you the youthful years, the most productive 4-5 years of our life have gone into achieving these high degrees for ourselves. The only peace we find, is with the idea that at the end it, will be all good. After 5 years I will be able to work and earn it back. At the end, I will have a sense of achievement, a purpose and be a step closer to my dream.

Unfortunately, too often, this understanding is shaken to its core. Sometimes it is due to conflicts with your advisor who holds your future in their hand. Sometimes it is due to inadequacies of your own willpower to persevere and push through obstacles. You are surrounded by fear, anxieties, uncertainties, along with poverty, a minority status, not enough control of life due to being a non-citizen in this land. Each time you want to apply for something, you would check whether the eligibility criteria says that only citizens are allowed! Then there are bigger fears. What if the market will crash? What if there is some trouble between my country and US? What if I have to go back home even before I have any chance to earn it back! There are endless possibilities, and the scariest ones, though less probable, often haunts us.

This is the reality of life for many international students in US, especially the PhD students who gamble not one or two years of their life but five to six years of their most productive life in this country to earn not just a degree but a life. A life to do something good for the humanity and a life that will enhance their family and offspring.

Such a gambles are often preceded by students’ dreams of finding their own place in the world. People who dare to dream big, dream different. Their aspirations and dreams are not average and so is their life. Unlike the gambling in casino, which is dependent on probability, a gamble such as PhD in US is more dependent on the person who dreamt it, and his or her support system. It allows an individual to explore the new and uncharted and that’s the beauty of this journey no matter where it ends.

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