INTRODUCTION

Humbat Jafarov (ID: 5172)
ENG 82B
Written Communication
Dr. Sylvia Y. Schoemaker Rippel
December 2, 2008
Self Introduction

It is my great pleasure to introduce myself here. I came to the U.S. three months ago from Gance, the second biggest city in Azerbaijan. I had worked as a public prosecutor for three years before coming to Lincoln University.
My first impression of the San Francisco Bay Area was quite good. I knew a lot of nice places including Golden Gate Bridge. Especially I like the view of the bridge from Sausalito side. I found a very nice scenic spot on that side nearby the freeway 101, which is not a commercialized place. Sausalito, the small town itself, is also charming and peaceful. Other examples of my favorite places are Twin Peaks, Nob Hill, Little Russia (those are in San Francisco), downtown Berkeley, Point Richmond, Alameda Beach, etc. I live in Alameda, and I go to a fitness club nearby my house every night. I like Lincoln University, too. Here I have made a lot of friends from all over the world.
On the other hand, I have gone through several scenes since I came here, which made me rather uncomfortable. For instance, a lot of miserable people are begging money on the street in every city’s downtown throughout the U.S. I have experienced to see those people in this area only, but many friends told me that this kind of people can be seen in every big and mid-sized city in the U.S. I am wondering why they do not try to find jobs. They should know that their situations and conditions are much better than foreign students here. Many students with F-1 visa are making every effort to get jobs. I know a number of Lincoln students who have been looking for jobs, attending job fairs, sending a lot of resumes to companies, getting interviews, as well as getting kind assistance by the university’s Student Services Office. The office has provided those students with several workshops and a job-fair trip in this semester. But they told me that it is still very hard to get a job even just for internship training. The main problem is that American companies do not want to hire such short-period workers in the recent economic recession. In addition, if companies are going to hire those foreign students for long time, they need to change the visa status, and many companies are reluctant to take troubles to process it for them. On the contrary, those people soliciting money on the street are mostly U.S. citizens. Compared with foreign students, those people’s actual situations are not miserable if they seriously look for jobs. Even if they would earn less than 20,000 dollars per year by their work, why do they have to beg just a dollar or even a quarter to unknown pedestrians on the street everyday and every night? Many books are telling us that “independence” is a primary virtue of the U.S. What a huge gap it is between the great virtue and the real U.S. society!
Finally, I would like to talk about my plan after getting the Master of Business Administration degree from Lincoln University. I have a plan to get a job at the government of Azerbaijan so that I could return a lot of things I am getting and learning here to the people in my country. I would feel happy in contributing to people’s welfare rather than getting huge amount of money. We can spend (or waste) a lot of money very easily, but the mental satisfaction in contributing to a society’s improvement will not be easily removed from my memory if I keep my faith.