As an International student, do you want to be Chicken or Eagle?
Once upon a time, at a large mountainside there was an eagle nest with 4 large eagle eggs inside. One day a mild earthquake rocked the mountain causing on the eggs to roll down to a chicken farm, located in the valley below. The hens instinctively joined together to protect the eagle egg treating it as one of their own. Eventually, the eagle egg hatched and a beautiful eagle was born.
The mother hens raised the eagle to be a chicken. The eagle loved his home and family but it seemed his spirit cried out for something more. One day, the eagle looked to the skies above and noticed a group of mighty eagles soaring. “Oh,” the eagle cried, “I wish I could soar like those birds”.
The chickens roared with laughter, “You cannot soar like those. You are a chicken and chickens do no soar.”
Each time the eagle talked about his dreams, he was told it couldn’t be done. That was what the eagle learned to believe. After time, the eagle stopped dreaming and continued to live his life as any other chicken. This is not just the story or chicken and eagle. It’s the story of many international students. They join the chicken group and think like a chicken despite the skills of an eagle.
When you come here, you approach your friends who have been here and seek advise one various matters such as selection of universities, suburbs, accommodation and finding part time jobs. They share the information depending on their experience. It doesn’t mean that you are meant to follow what they have done. Unfortunately, most international students follow the crowd by sabotaging their skills and talents. Finally, they remain as a chicken.
I don’t want you to do that; I want you to pull out your skills and talents by sharing these two inspirational stories of two international students who have gone against the tides and made their own way and became and inspiration to many other international students.
I would like to share these stories to help you realise that you HAVE skills of an eagle than a chicken.
Radhika Shah, who came to Australia as an international student from India to study a degree in web designing. Before she came to Australia, she was working as a graphic designer with a dream of studying in Australia. She attended an education fair to find out about study in Australia and accidentally met a representative of Cambridge International College (which I always mention in my blog to attend events to network more). She told him about her work and expertise and job offer was ready for her before she arrived in Australia. Finally, she decided to study in Melbourne as the job was offered in that city. After that she never looked back, completed her studies while working part time for many corporate companies. Ostensibly, these skills and experience helped her to set up her own web designing studies. She happily says she reached to a break even point just in 4 months after starting her business.
Another International Student, Rashi Yadav, came to Australia as an international student to study a degree in Engineering and Management. She loves dancing and very good at it. She learnt various forms of dancing such as Bharatanatyam, Contemporary and Jazz. But Pole dancing caught her interest, now working as a pole dancer. Keeping the judgement apart, she is happy with what she is doing while earning good part time income. This job gave an opportunity to perform a dance show with a group of professional dancers at a festival. Apart from this, it created a pathway to start her own podcast ‘let’s be Rashional’.
When you interpret these two international student’s journeys; they were pro-active and utilized their existing skills in their favour. And these skills were developed before arriving to Australia. I wanted you to do that! Why I stress to develop your skills before coming to Australia is: you may not have enough time to concentrate on developing new skills while you are immersed in understanding the new culture, new environment and adjust to new lifestyle apart from meeting the deadlines your full time study.
When you look bit further Radhika’s part time experience helped her to develop skills and think outside the box to start her own business and Rashi developed many other skills such as performing stage shows, podcasting skills and networking with great professionals in that field. These are all extra skills occupies on their resume apart from their degree certificate. I believe those skills weigh more towards making them different than other people.
The point I want to convey here is: if you analyse their jobs; they have brought their skills into practice and that helped them to make their career.
What I mean is you may have similar skills that you may have not noticed yourself carefully. You may be good at something that may fetch you part time or full time income when you are in Australia. Close your eyes and think carefully! Let me help you by listing some of my ideas:
Like Radhika you can learn web designing skills and teach in a college or school; or like Rashi you may have craze for dance. After you move here, you can teach kids. We pay $25 for one hour class to our elder daughter for a traditional dance class. I have seen there are classes for almost any form of dance in Australia.
In similar way, you can think of tutoring subjects like maths or English. We pay $35 per hour for a home tutor for our daughter. You can do your own maths how much you can earn if you have 10 kids under your profile.
Many other skills you can think of like photography, artwork (selling through etsy.com), swimming, writing, cooking, baking and many others. Writing is another interesting skill which has potential to earn good income by writing for blogs of your interest or helping co-students in completing their assignments for a fee. This skill further helps you in your career in many ways to put your thoughts and ideas critically, informative, and persuasively.
You may find this useful:
Top 10 skills you can develop before coming to Australia
If you ask me what skills I have put into practice, Data entry skills which I learnt when I was in year 11 and 12. These skills helped me to sustain in my job for longer time as a contractor / international student. Because I used to process double the quantity than an average full time employee does. If they process 50 records I was able to process 100 records.
Think whether you want to remain as a chicken by working in jobs which don’t take you anywhere or fly like an eagle with abundance of opportunities by putting your skills into practice.
Let me know if you have a skill and not sure how to monetize it; don’t forget to reach out to me on lifeisezy9@gmail.com
Also don’t forget to share your story in comments if you put your skills into practice which you may indirectly inspire others like Radhika and Rashi.
