Graduation of an International Student

One of the things I witness and really feels for are seeing international folks and the not so obvious hardships they deal with. It's so unspoken but I'd like to think it makes us stronger.

The Dude works in academia and has student interns who are usually international students whose visas can only allow them to work within the same educational institution they are attending. This affected some of my friends when i was in college and it sucked ass majorly to see my friends go home after a year after graduation because their visas ran out when their student visas ran out and companies have preference on hiring Americans.

Not blaming the companies, just a general fact.

One of the Dude's PhD interns is graduating with an amazing super genius degree from a top private school in US, and his family will not be able to attend his graduation, just like dad, with his many trainings here in the US when we lived in Taiwan.

Mom thought uprooting bro and me constantly would be a bad decision on our education and frankly, traveling with two little kids internationally would have been really insanely expensive on dad's military pay.

What we know of dad's education here, we learned from his faded photographs with the rounded corners, stories we'd hear from his friends later on when we'd all meet up in DC thanks to DC being a draw for diplomats and major military brainpowers and yearbooks, for we were never there for his graduations like he was not there for my birth.

The intern's family won't be able to make it because of visa/money reasons and he shrugs it off because that is just the life of an international student from a non first world country.

It breaks my heart because in one hand I'm so Americanized that I put a lot of sentimentality into major life events like graduation/prom/weddings but on the other I understand it's nothing to dwell on, you just keep going in life.

He did ask the Dude and I to attend his graduation so he can have someone to give the tickets to.

Fuck yes, I'll be there with my zoomin' camera and flowers for the kid. Not just everyone can graduate with a very specialized engineering PhD degree and NOT have that documented like you're a rockstar.