In order for Sandy to appeal to a wide-range of job opportunities, Sandy is pursuing a variety of avenues. Through the New Jersey Society of Professional Land Surveyors, she is making important contacts and learning what steps she must take to be a licensed land surveyor in New Jersey.
Thanks to Chris Schneider, Sandy learned of a class to become a Concrete Field Testing Technician. With the money she has earned working at Subway, Sandy paid the $600 registration fee and will spend two evenings (August 27 and September 3) learning about concrete.
Many of the job opportunities require the applicant to have a valid driver's license. Although Sandy has a Syrian driver's license, she is in process of studying and learning the rules of the road for New Jersey in order to obtain a NJ driver's license. She hopes to take the written exam in early September.
Now that Sandy received Temporary Protected Status from the government, we decided to let her student visa expire. The TPS protects Sandy from being deported as long as the TPS has not expired. With the ongoing situation in Syria, it appears this may be a long time before anything changes with the TPS program. In order for Sandy to maintain her student visa she would have had to enroll for a minimum of 12 credits at a school of higher education. Whereas Bergen Community College is affordable, they would have charged her a higher rate. Either way it was financially prohibitive to remain a student. Quite frankly, her goal is not to be a student but to find a job.
On October 6, Sandy began her new job as a concrete field inspector in New York City. Every day that concrete is being poured at a particular job site, Sandy is there to conduct a variety of tests on the concrete to make sure it is the correct strength.
