Managing Income Risk


I am sorry for the late post. I accidentally saw that there is no blog post due for coming Friday and thought it was for this week.

Managing future income risk is not a foreign topic for me anymore. As a senior, it is time for me to look into jobs and how much I should get paid to be reasonable. I am also considering graduate school, so how much cost will incur in the future one or two more years are also factors I have to consider. These are all concerns, as mentioned in the prompt, because I do not know where I will work, how much I will earn, and what kinds of happenings will happen to be in the future. In terms of where I will work, as an international student, my options are many. I can go back to where I am from to pursue a career there or I can go to other countries where I grew up in. My ultimate goal, however, is to pursue at least a short-term career in the United States post-graduation. This desire actually increases my income risk as working in the United States has become harder since I came to the United States as a freshman of the University of Illinois.

My major is another factor that determines how I manage future income risk. I was accepted as a math major in my freshman year and soon realized my passion does not align with mathematical proving, but the calculation and application of it. I also liked the coding components of statistics courses that I was required to take as a math student. I also came to know that data is an abundant field of opportunity that has risen and will continue to rise in the future, and that is why I transferred to Statistics. After a thorough consideration, I figured I needed a field where I can apply my technical skills into, so I declared economics as my double major, that will not delay my graduation, yet aid my chance of getting hired in the business industry. I am glad that these two majors are all broad enough to be applicable to many fields and with my extra work to learn coding, I can pursue even further, such as data scientist and data engineer.

I have also completed several internships on campus to be a competitive candidate for future positions. Although there were limitations of what I can master within departments in the university compared to corporations, I am glad that I got an experience of the working culture and team atmosphere is like. I also came to realize recently that my decision to go to graduate school and to ask for recommendation letters were possible because I had great supervisors who liked my work ethic very much.

My decision to apply for graduation school is also part of my management of income risk. As I mentioned, I would like to pursue a career in the States and one of the ways to make it possible is through another advanced degree. Not only that, but I figured the knowledge I learned from classes in undergraduate is not directly relevant with what I want to do, so a more concentrated program will well prepare me for that.

As the first child of the entire big family, I did not have a precedent whom went through the job market or talk about income risk management. I would like to the establish a good precedent and a good big sister to talk to for my brother and cousins. I believe what I have been doing as an undergraduate shows that I am capable to manage my own income risk in coming years. I work part-time on campus. The money I receive is much less than I need for spending. I am thankful that I have a supporting parents who provide me with living, but I like to save up an extra money that I have made in a separate account to able to use it for special cases, such as travelling. Within that separate account, I always have at least $2,000 ready, which is the cost of a plane ticket to go back home if anything goes wrong. I believe this is the good amount of money as covering accidents that may go wrong for a college student.

Comments

  1. Professor ArvanOctober 20, 2019 at 5:10 PM

    To me it is regrettable that international students have a harder time now staying in the U.S. But given the current realities, I wonder if you have considered going to graduate school in a different country, Canada for instance. I am not knowledgeable on these matters so please don't take this as advice for you, other than what an interested but outside part would offer. I would consider graduate education in the U.S., but also in other English speaking countries, and then in the EU even if English is not the primary language. When you need to make a choice about this, you should be aware of the alternatives.

    The uncertainty you've identified, about where you will work, what you will do, and how much you will earn can be a blessing as well as a curse. It means your expectations of your immediate future need to be open ended and, hence, require you to show some flexibility about them. The expression is - rolling with the punches. If you can learn to do that, deal with whatever comes your way, that may be a better way to manage risk than to have strong predetermined view of the outcomes you want to achieve. In other words, some of managing income risk is about your own attitude regarding the possibilities you will face.

    But there is a different matter, first about the possibilities themselves, then second, about the obligations that you carry with you. As an international student who wants to remain in the U.S., at least for a while, your spoken English might matter a lot toward achieving that end. I would judge that you are pretty good in that dimension. There is then how well you do in talking about American culture. I can't assess that. I wonder what you've done, to make that less of an issue.

    The obligations you talked about are with regard to your younger siblings. Will they follow in your path and attend college in the U.S.? Might it be good for your (extended) family if some of them didn't go to college but instead went to work right out of high school? I surely don't know the answer to that question, but maybe you can add value by trying to answer it yourself and then seeing how your family and your community reacts to those answers.

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    Replies
    1. Joan Robinson Econ 490 fall 2019October 22, 2019 at 6:32 PM

      Thank you for understanding the frustrations! I understand that I need to be a better candidate so that employers see the need of spending extra to sponsor me. I have never considered graduate schools outside of the US actually, partly because, according to my shallow knowledge about job market, I may go back to Asia to work and usually US schools have better reputation than other schools.

      I am glad that you brought up how well I am talking about American culture. I was just watching an American chef show and thought about this question. I see that when Americans meet for the first time, they are fast at finding common grounds and start to develop their conversation then on. I wanted to build this skills and have been mastering them since I noticed the need to do so. But today, I realize I can a certain limit to what find of common ground I can find since the background I grow up in is totally different from the people I speak with, the places I travelled with my family, food I had growing up, and the education system, and many more. I have to say this is hard, but as a person who grew up most of her life adapting to new environment, with few more years of interaction with locals, I will be able to break this barrier, as complaining my current state will never do me any good.

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