Euphoria: Landing In America (The End)

Rolling in Dollars: Landing In America (The End)

Now that I was rolling in dollars, 
I became a baller. 
I went to six flags with some of my 
classmates, I started to eat more rice 
and orange chicken at panda express, 
of course, I shopped for clothes a lot 
and became a baffer, smoked turkey 
graced my meals more frequently, 
I graduated from a 2-figure synthetic 
weave to a 3-figure human hair weave,
 I was finally able to include yam in 
my diet a year after I arrived in the US,  
and so on. 
I didn’t spend all my money oh – I saved 
a lot of it - I just indulged a little bit 
seeing as I was living almost in poverty 
before I got the GA position. 
After living alone for one year, I had to 
move out of my apartment because 
the apartment managers found me a 
roommate. 
We lived together for a month before 
I moved out – she was white and we 
didn’t get along at all. 
I had the room to myself while she slept 
in the living room. 
She was quite untidy -she’d mess up 
the kitchen and would fill up her 
wastebasket and mine without emptying 
them.
She once had a male roommate sleepover 
and when I complained, she laughed in 
my face and said she could do whatever 
she wanted. 
My apartment which used to be a haven 
was now somewhere I avoided thanks 
to her. 
I wish I could say I was the bigger person 
and I let it all slide but that would be 
untruthful. 
I became vengeful and sought to make 
her as uncomfortable as she made me. 
I realized she slept early while I slept 
really late and I would either be 
talking very loudly on the phone or 
watching tv on my laptop while she 
tried to sleep. 
She’d knock on the wall linking the living 
room and my room and ask me to keep 
it down but I would ignore her and 
continue with my noise. 
When I was moving out, she had filled 
up my trash can as usual and emptied 
hers so I emptied mine in hers. 
I moved to a 2-bedroom apartment
 that was farther from school than my 
old apartment and ended up with 
another 2 white roommates. 
The trouble-some one eventually 
moved out and got a Congolese girl, T, 
whom I got along very well with to 
take her place.
The bigger career fair with many 
recruiters from different companies 
was done in the fall semester while 
the smaller one was done in the 
spring semester. 
Whenever you saw an employer stall 
with a very long queue, you’d know 
they sponsored work visas for 
international students. 
Conversely, an employer stall with almost 
no one queuing in front of it meant 
they didn’t sponsor work visas for 
international students and only hired 
American citizens and permanent residents. 
Cisco, the Networking Giant, hired a 
LOT from my school - especially from 
my program -  and they sponsored 
international students. 
They were present during the fall career 
fair and were hiring software Engineers 
(Testers and developers). 
I had tried learning programming via a 
tutor and youtube but it didn’t work out. 
I took a class where we had to program 
in Matlab and my partner ended up doing 
a huge chunk of the project cuz it 
was hard for me to figure out Matlab. 
All these made me conclude that a software 
Engineering role wasn’t in the works for me.
The fall Career fair took place in October 
2013 and graduation was in the last 
week of May, 2014. 
I figured I had a lot of time to get a job 
that was better suited to my skills and 
involved little to no programming
Some of my classmates who interned 
at good companies already had full-time
 offers. 
My class wasn’t very large so you knew 
who had a job and who was still 
job-hunting. 
Anyway, I didn’t speak to the Cisco 
representatives at career fair and just 
did the rounds with other employers 
of international students just to fulfill 
all righteousness. 
I found out a few weeks later that some 
of my friends who spoke to the Cisco 
representatives and had NO PROGRAMMING 
EXPERIENCE were offered full-time 
jobs after only a 30-minute on-campus i
nterview – they didn’t even do multiple
 interviews or fly to Cisco’s HQ in California. 
I was insanely jealous of those classmates 
who were hired because they were moving 
to sunny California, working with one of 
the tech giants with a 6-figure salary. 
I was also very angry at myself and 
beat up myself for the longest time for 
not even attempting to speak to the 
recruiters.
By this time, I had changed from my f
ellowship to a graduate student fellowship 
where many of its members attended 
a non-denominational fellowship not 
too far from me. 
During the semester, they had a church 
service for students on campus and 
also had church off-campus for 
families and older people. 
I don’t remember how I ended up at 
the off-campus church but I met an 
older Nigerian Lady, N, who I became 
friends with and who started to pick 
me up for church most Sundays and 
drive me back home. 
I also made a Taiwanese PhD-candidate 
friend, who was an expert ice-skater
 – watching her ice-skate is one of the 
most awe-inducing scenes I have 
ever seen. 
I became friendly with 2 African American 
girls and ended up hanging out with 
them and other grad students as 
restaurants, game nights, and karaoke 
bars though I never sang because 
I was way too shy. 
At one of the karaoke bars, they played 
2 line dancing songs and almost 
everyone except me got up to dance 
because I didn’t know the steps. 
The AA girls would eventually teach 
me 3 of the most popular line dancing 
routine at a mini send-forth party they 
organized for me before my graduation.
I got along really well with N, my older 
Nigerian friend and she was a huge 
source of wisdom. 
She was single at the time and in her 
late thirties but was very much 
interested in getting married and 
having children while still holding 
on to her Christian values. 
She told me her story of how she 
became an American citizen in 8 years 
without getting into an arranged marriage 
It was quite the story. 
She also belonged to several groups 
that met frequently and was super 
intentional about meeting people. 
She took me along with her to a few 
events organized by her groups including 
a kayaking event where she and I came last. 
I also became friends with a classmate 
of mine, S, and we attended a few 
graduate students’ events together. 
But a few weeks into my final semester, 
I started to get anxious about not 
having a job that would sponsor a 
work visa for me. 
I was convinced it would be very 
difficult to get a job after graduation 
therefore I needed to get one before 
graduation. By this time, more classmates 
had gotten full-time offers.
I stopped hanging out with S, whenever 
she invited me for trips because I wanted 
to concentrate fully on getting a job and 
I felt like if God saw me gallivanting 
and enjoying myself, he’d think I wasn’t 
serious about getting a job. 
I spent most of my time in my GA office; 
applying to any and every job, studying 
as much as possible and praying a lot of 
“God please help me get a job I don’t 
want to go back to Nigeria just yet prayers”, 
and berating myself for not speaking to 
the cisco recruiters. 
My final semester that was supposed to 
be the most fun semester turned out to 
be the saddest one yet because I didn’t 
have a job while others did – I wasn’t 
interested in comparing myself with 
my fellow jobless classmates – I 
preferred comparing myself with the 
ones who had jobs. 
I applied for a $1500 scholarship that 
was open to students in my class 
who had a 3.85 and above GPA and got it. 
However, I was still sad and anxious 
about not having a full-time job and 
didn’t even attend the award ceremony.
One day at the beginning of April, N, 
invited me for a casting crown concert 
and I went because I love casting crown 
and I’d never attended a concert in the US. 
I loved it A LOT and even wrote a post 
about it on Instagram. 
They sang a song titled “already there” 
and like magic, the song took away most 
of my anxiety about not having a job. 
It’s about God already being in one’s 
future and knowing how one’s life would 
end so there’s no need for one to be 
anxious or fearful. 
R introduced me to some Nigerian guy 
in my 2nd semester who had moved 
to Cali in September and was working 
for Apple at the time. 
He encouraged me to apply to Apple and 
Google and I did. I got a phone interview 
with an Apple HR recruiter and a google 
tech recruiter. 
I passed the former but performed terribly 
at the latter and I never heard from the 
recruiter again despite all the emails I 
sent to him.
I was constantly refreshing my school’s 
job portal for openings and on April 19, 2014 
I saw a Software Test Engineering role from 
Arista and the requirements included; 
a minimum of 3.5 GPA, knowledge of 
networking and networking protocols, and 
current enrollment in a masters of telecoms 
program. 
By this time, the spirit of procrastination had 
left me and immediately I saw the role, I 
modified my resume to suit it and submitted 
it on the job portal. 
My specialization was actually in wireless 
but I had taken a 6-months Networking 
course and certification in Nigeria back 
in 2007 which I loved and could still 
remembered most of what I learned in it. 
It was on the strength of that training/certification 
that I applied for the role. 
By this time, I had a can-do mindset ad was 
ready to do any job whether or not I was 
qualified for the role so far as they would 
file for a work visa for me. 
The following day, I got an email from 
someone in Arista asking to schedule a 
phone interview with me and we fixed 
a date. 
He called me that same week but I was 
quite nervous.
He’d ask me questions and I would 
answer correctly but he’d twist the 
questions and I would get tripped and 
change my answer. 
I explained away my slip-ups as nerves 
and asked him not to penalize me for it. 
He asked if I knew BGP and other networking 
protocols which I didn’t and I said as much. 
He recommended I go learn them in 
preparation for my 2nd phone interview. 
He also asked me to send my unofficial 
transcript so he could confirm my GPA. 
That same week or the following, 
I can’t remember, I got a follow-up 
interview from the manager of the role 
I applied for at Apple. 
It was a wireless role about a course I 
had taken and aced just the previous semester. 
But I was so nervous and anxious, I flunked 
even the most basic questions. 
I was still hopeful that God could intervene 
and I’d be flown to HQ for the main interview. 
I studied the living hell out of the BGP 
and other protocols the Arista guy 
mentioned and got my friend F, who 
had a lot of Networking experience 
before coming to UMD to teach me.
I was much more confident in my follow-up 
phone interview but I still slipped up a 
few times. 
The following day, I was asked to choose 
a date for my on-site interview at Arista HQ 
in silicon valley. 
I wanted to be sufficiently prepared and 
selected a date that was almost 3 weeks 
from the date I spoke with the recruiter 
and coincided with the eve of my cousin’s 
wedding in Wisconsin so I could just fly 
from California to Madison, Wisconsin. 
I prayed very hard and studied even harder. 
Nothing was not going to snatch this role 
which was offered to me on a platter of 
gold from my hands. 
I was asked to choose between two hotels 
to stay in and again like a rookie, I chose 
the cheaper one. 
Anyway, I flew into California on a Thursday 
evening and attended the interview the 
following Friday. 
The first interview was a technical interview 
with 3 people asking me questions. 
I answered their questions to the best of 
my ability and the ones I had no idea of 
and couldn’t attempt, I honestly told 
them and didn’t try to talk my way out of it.
After that interview, I had lunch with about 
six fresh graduate hires, all Indians, and 
asked them questions about Arista. 
They all said it was a fantastic place to 
work and there was nothing they hated 
about the company but me I did not 
believe them. 
After lunch, I had an interview with the 
manager and it was mostly behavioral 
not technical. 
I turned on my extroverted, charming, and 
sister happiness personality and was 
asking him questions confidently. 
After I was hired and he became my manager, 
he would tell me I was the most engaging 
of all the fresh graduates he interviewed. 
Desperate times call for desperate measures 
people. 
After my interview with him, I met with 
the director of the software testing team 
and extroverted Toyeen came up again 
and was asking him questions after he’d 
asked me his. 
I had him laughing in no time. 
After the interview, he told me everyone 
who’d interviewed me loved me and he 
was offering me the job. 
He said he needed letters of recommendation 
from my references before making me an 
offer but he knew they’d write only good 
things.
People of God it was like I had died and 
went to Heaven. 
I couldn’t believe it. 
That was the first time someone would offer 
me a job immediately after an interview. 
I comported myself, and calmly thanked 
him for the offer and told him I would 
send the details of my references. 
I still couldn’t believe I had been offered 
a job all through the ride to the airport 
and Madison. 
I was just grinning from ear to ear throughout 
the flight. 
That day was exactly 2 weeks to my graduation. 
I got to the Madison airport and was picked 
up by the pickup services my cousin had 
arranged. 
I arrived at the hotel where my parents 
were also staying and saw them in a corner 
with my aunty. 
I was walking towards them when my aunty 
saw me and nudged them and pointed 
at me. With so much happiness in my voice, 
I walked up to them and said “Mummy, Daddy, 
Omo yin ti ri ise oh”. (Your daughter has found a job).

THE END

Firecracker Toyeen