I thought I was just preparing for a language course but ended up looking at visa options instead

The shift from simple language classes to visa worries

I honestly didn’t start with any grand plan about moving abroad permanently. My initial intention was just to take a short language program, maybe three months or so, just to see what it felt like to live somewhere else for a bit. I looked at a few schools, and it seemed like a standard F-1 visa process. You just need the I-20 form from the school and then you go to the embassy. But once you start looking at the costs—tuition plus the ridiculous cost of living in any major city—you start thinking, ‘Wait, if I’m spending all this money, shouldn’t I be getting more out of it?’ That was when the distraction started. I found myself looking at job postings instead of language curriculum. Suddenly, I was reading about whether I should have gone to that welding school in Daejeon instead of trying to improve my English. It’s funny how a plan to ‘study’ quickly turns into a mental calculation of ‘how do I actually earn money here.’

Why the B1/B2 visa was never going to be the answer

There is this persistent rumor among people who are just starting to look into this stuff that you can just go on a B1/B2 tourist visa and figure it out once you get there. I had a friend who kept insisting that it was fine, that you could just ‘network’ your way into a position. When I checked, it felt incredibly risky. You are essentially living on borrowed time. Even if you don’t get caught, the stress of knowing you aren’t legally allowed to work is heavy. I looked at my bank balance—I had about 15,000 USD saved up, which sounded like a lot until I realized it covers maybe six months of very frugal living in a place like California or New York. The moment I started calculating rent and groceries, the idea of doing this on a tourist visa felt like setting my money on fire. I remember staring at the embassy website, seeing the warnings about unauthorized employment, and just closing the tab. It wasn’t worth the anxiety.

The reality check of trying to find ‘easy’ work

I briefly entertained the idea of working at a buffet or doing some casual labor while studying, thinking it would be similar to the part-time jobs I had back in Korea. But even those simple jobs require legal authorization. I looked into the Canadian working holiday schemes and some internships, but the paperwork is tedious. Everything requires a ‘sponsor’ or a specific type of status. I remember reading about students getting training in fields like culinary work or beauty services just to boost their chances of getting an actual work visa. It felt so much more serious than I had anticipated. It wasn’t about learning a language anymore; it was about building a resume that a foreign employer would actually care about. I spent a whole afternoon looking at intern resume templates and realized that my existing experience wasn’t exactly ‘transferable’ in the way I hoped.

Feeling stuck in the middle of two worlds

There is a strange sense of being caught between wanting to leave and not knowing where to land. I see news about people going overseas for ‘internships’ only to find themselves in weird situations, or worse, getting mixed up in things they didn’t sign up for. It makes you hesitant to trust any program that promises a quick path to a visa. I am still technically in the planning phase, but the ‘planning’ has become this endless loop of checking visa requirements, realizing I don’t qualify yet, and then going back to look at more language schools. It feels like I’m constantly walking toward a door that keeps moving further away. I don’t even know if I’ll end up going. Maybe I’ll just stay here and work for another year to save more money, but then the cycle of ‘should I go or should I stay’ just repeats itself every Sunday night.