Had my Conventions management exam today, pretty manageable, so that called for a celebration. Also got the results for Marketing – I got a distinction for it! yay for Szez for getting the hang of MCQ tests. muahaha. (people who know me know that essays are my forte)
Right after the paper we had the director of recruitment and other one I think it’s a F&B manager from The Broadmoor Colorado Springs to come and give a presentation on the 6/12 months job placement in the States, stuff like the positions available, the housing arrangements, the pay, etcetera. The presentation was pretty straight forward, but I didn’t like the fact that they only let you work in one position for your whole stay (you can request for experience in other departments for “cross-training” for a bit but they don’t provide job rotation which lets you try ur hand at more varied positions), and you gotta find ur own accomodation after like 30 days of stay in the hotel’s hostel. That’s like, extra costs and stuff with limited intern pay, so I wasn’t that impressed after the presentation.
And then it was, as usual, the Q&A session, and nobody had anything so ask (the principal tried to warm things up by asking sth about the sponsorship fees and stuff, but yea as usual Asian students aren’t that outspoken at all. )
so I raised my doubt about what happens during the job (that’s when I realise they don’t do job rotation) and also after that, what happens, do you get to stay in the hotel or other hotels in the States for a full time position (meaning you no longer get intern pay and you get a work permit instead of the intern visa) to which they said no, you can’t stay to work in any hotel and you hafta go back to where you’re from (in my case, Malaysia) to work for 2 years so you can transfer your knowledge you learn from the States to your home country.
Well this came as surprise to me cuz my school never told us anything about the nature of the job placement / internship. Apparently you go there on a J1 internship visa and the rule about having to work outside the States after your 6/12 months of intern applies to all employers who employ international interns under the J1 internship visa program.
This means that a student who has plans to continue work in the States after their intern can’t do that because of the nature of the J1 internship visa! This major catch to that glorious opportunity to start your career in the States with an internship was so obscenely left out in my school’s website, the brochures they have and from the school administration itself that I’m beginning to think it’s time for some genuinely useful information to be included in the prospectus!
For students who have no knowledge of US internships, they depend on the school for information they’re gonna need, since schools are supposed to be service providers. My school (this time I’m not afraid to announce their name) CONTINENTAL EDUCATORS, failed to mention (or should I say, misrepresented the nature of the internship by omission) that the internship was the J1 internship; they only mentioned that students will get the opportunity to work in the states in a 1-year job placement (they didn’t use the word internship, and J1 was never mentioned at all in the course of my program until today).
What’s more ridiculous was that the principal called me on my cell (and called my sister’s line, just because my phone was engaged, making her think it’s an emergency or something happened to me) shortly after I left the school to give me a lecture for asking the very question of what happens after, accusing me of “instigating” other students to do God-knows-what and such, repeating as an answer, to my proposal of including more information of the J1 trainee program for prospective students, that all information students need to know regarding what the school can do for them have all been communicated in the pre-registration briefing and interview and in the prospectus.
My very innocent inquiry perhaps put off the interest of students who have the desire to go for the job placement as a stepping stone for a career in the States, but it was never my intention to instigate or provoke or suggest or influence, in any way, any student who overheard my question during the Q&A session, to boycott this J1 internship program.
CE talks about striving to get feedback from students for improvement in their administration, and here they are, contradicting themselves. Blame the school administration for creating such a gaping loophole and therefore allowing me to bust their ass for the omission, and not moi, for their own fault. I feel so a tad amused & indignant beacuse the principal also hung up on me while I was still talking on the phone with him. Not very professional behaviour, I see. And apparently everybody who stayed behind at school could hear him blasting at me over the phone (cuz he didn’t close the door to his office and the school’s pretty small) and after he hung up on me he told told everyone “you HAVE to go back (to your country) after that internship!” repeatedly. A tad too late this information has come, I think.
So what’s it gonna be? I think the best way for the school to resolve this episode of raised voices and accusations is for the school administration to apologize for the lack of information on the US internship, and then rectify their mistake of omission (I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt here that perhaps they didn’t realise prospective students may see information on the J1 internship program as useful and crucial to their decision to sign up for the course in the first place) by inserting this information into their website and brochures.
To be the gentleman or the rogue, they get to choose. Afterall, this is a democratic & meritocratic country isn’t it?
