Finally , I made it to Purdue University !!!! Amazing school,
amazing people and world class education. I was living my dream. America is a
beautiful place. We Indian students felt so accepted by the Americans. Everyone
was so friendly and kind , no wonder people from all over the world come here
to study and work and feel so accepted. I was studying the subjects I liked,
doing great school projects, making new friends and I also met my now husband at
Purdue and we started dating. It all seemed so perfect. I got the Internship I
was promised and performed well. The firm did give me the full time job
offer following the internship based on my good intern evaluation. I graduated from Purdue in summer of
2014 with a perfect 4.0/4.0 GPA and with not one but four job offers in hand .
Don't want to name the firms but one was of course the firm who had chosen me
for the fellowship program and where I interned , two of them were banks and
one a top consulting firm. I was over whelmed. I chose one of them by comparing
all options in hand and that was the start of my professional Journey.
Now to provide some back drop for whats to follow, after
completing your Masters in USA, you get OPT(Optional practice training) but
your visa status is still F1 -Student visa and if you are in STEM (Science,
Technology, Engineering and Math) approved courses , the total OPT is 36
months. So you get three years and three attempts at applying for H1B work Visa which
are doled out by a lottery once a year in April to 85,000 people. If the number of applications received are more than the quota, they do a purely random selection from the received applications. In my case, I had the
job offers in October , 2013 even though I actually graduated in May,2014 so I
got an extra attempt at H1B in April,2014. So to not confuse you any
further, legally including the first attempt before joining the firm , I would get a chance to apply H1B in April 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 . Summer of
2017 is when my OPT and work authorization would expire. I thought to myself ,fair enough ! Four chances
at the lottery . All the people with advanced degree have an additional small quota
(20,000 out of 85,000) so it felt quite certain that I would make it one out of
those 4 attempts. The thought did strike me back when all this started that hey, for a country as developed as USA ,this purely random selection process for the so called 'skilled work visa' is unfair; But then I thought to myself, you got to get lucky one out
of those four times at least and so I relaxed and moved on.
The next couple of years at job were so smooth and professionally
satisfying. I learnt so much , worked with some extremely intelligent people
and loved my Job. I had the nicest bosses one could wish for. I am no star performer but I was doing my job quite well, my performance
review, raises and feedback proved that and I was working hard so I was
content. The first couple of times when I didn't make it through the lottery, I
didn't think too much about it. I mean, I had so much going on and felt that
eventually I am going to make it. The realty hit me hard the third time when i
got rejected . I was doing what ever was in my control at my job to
continuously push myself forward but luck was certainly not favoring me and pushing me backward. The
summer of 2016 was the first time I actually felt maybe hard work isn't enough?
Merit is not relevant anymore? This visa process is designed to favor the lucky
and maybe luck is all I ever needed? Was I living my whole life with incorrect
beliefs ? We will soon find out.
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