The burden of being an international Ph.D. student

I cannot get my head around how much my social position changed since I came to Vancouver following my passion for becoming a Doctor-Doctor (I already have a medical degree). I came with a student visa, which means I pay more tuition, cannot get a full-time job and am not eligible for more than half of the available scholarships. Consequently, I became poor. My wife and I spend sixty percent of our income on rent and daycare every month. Our three-year-old started helping with the house expenses 18 months after we arrived when she finally became eligible for childcare benefits. Those were the worst 18 months of my life, economically speaking.

I also became socially ignorant. While I managed to learn the appropriate standing distance, I struggled to understand everything else. For example, I did not know that the ministry of health was a provincial thing. The entire health governance escaped me, which is a big issue as a population and public health student. These are prospective employers but also the basis of day-to-day conversations upon which other people will judge you. Thank goodness a pandemic arrived, and this became part of my newsfeed even if I wanted to evade it.

My CV got considerably shorter and impractical. You see, having worked as a university Instructor for a year (with over 100 students) does count as teaching experience, but not really. Unless someone is in a hurry, you need Canadian experience for almost every available position. I also needed to overcome my language shortcomings. I could not write flawlessly anymore until I found Grammarly. They still have to invent software that does the same for oral presentations. Until then, you will see me stumbling between languages trying to figure out what I was actually thinking.

Emotionally, I struggle as every other student does. Apart from the cultural shock of feeling unwanted, the main difference is the lack of familial support. I take it this is common for most people in developed countries. Still, Latinos are used to ayllus: extended families that provide support even when you are mildly related to them and way after becoming an adult. We are used to intruding in other people’s lives without invitation and welcome others as easily. This crippled social structure was not different from that of my classmates, but it was certainly unexpected.

Think about what working in a country without research grants does to a researcher’s practical skills. My previous lab conducted public health research through sheer creativity and willpower. We found open data (mostly cross-sectional), developed a research question, and worked our way through it. Experimental designs do not come naturally to me. I am deeply annoyed by the slow and painful process of getting ethical approval–I know this is not unique to international students–and I never learned how to deal with multiple parties to make a project successful.

When some of the above problems converge, you get into a crisis. Because of public pressure (and past lawsuits), some universities are “prepared” for this. They have links: to book appointments with advisors, to web tutorials, to online yoga. Clicking on those gets you new tasks that take time away from prior commitments to help you pay rent or eventually graduate to avoid losing student status (e.g., getting deported). But remember, prioritize your mental health kids because that one is not included in the mandatory International Student Health Fee.