My J1 summer

This is the 51st year of the J1 visa, allowing Irish students to work in the US. But what really goes on during those three months of ‘freedom’? Student Nicky Rackard opens his diary on his 2012 summer in Chicago

Just touched town in Chicago. It’s May 29. I’ve spent three years working my ass off in college so I’m desperate for some new experiences. I have a hostel booked for three nights.

May 30

About 90% of the occupants of my hostel are also J1 students.

As soon as I step in the door I bump into Paddy and Ciaran from college. As lovely as they are, I’m determined not to spend the summer hanging out with people from home.

June 5

Those three days in the hostel have turned into a week spent crammed onto an air mattress in a room with 16 other Irish guys.

I shouldn’t have been surprised to find out that it’s very difficult to find accommodation here if you’re an unemployed student from a country known mostly for its drinking and fighting. The hostel is doing its best to deal with the influx of Irish. Sections of it, still under construction, are being outfitted with airbeds. Apparently church basements are being converted into makeshift accommodation..!

June 6

There were stories going around of a man who can sort out J1 students with accommodation — known only as ‘Vince’. No one seemed to have seen him first hand so we tried for days and eventually got a call through. What happened next was straight out of a movie. He sent one of his ‘guys’ to pick us up in the dodgiest old people carrier I have ever seen. We drove further and further outside downtown Chicago and were eventually dropped off in what appeared to be some manner of Mexican ghetto, 30 minutes outside the city centre. This is where we met the man himself. Vince is this polite twenty-something guy, with the unmistakable glint of a chancer in his eye. He was only too happy to see us and he showed us a completely unfurnished two-bedroom apartment and told us if we wanted it, he needed cash ‘up front’.

Everything that happened next is a bit of a blur, but before I knew it, I was sitting cross-legged on the bare floor of my new home watching Vince count a ginormous pile of dollar bills.

For $400 each in cash, we have rent for the summer — gas, electricity and internet included. We also haven’t received a set of keys yet, so there always has to be at least one person in the house. The upside is, there are 16 of us sharing this place, so that’s not too difficult.

June 11

We went to the Chicago Blues Festival the other night. They hold it in Grant Park — a huge public park beside the coast downtown. I would say it resembled Electric Picnic, except it was about 20ºC at night and when you looked up you were surrounded by a brightly lit wall of skyscrapers, not Laois. Also the majority of the people attending were completely sober, yet somehow they were still able to dance. I’m hugely impressed by this healthy lifestyle.

June 15

I reluctantly have started my search for a job. The unemployed lifestyle was nice but it’s time to earn my way. So I made a quick visit to a copy shop and make 70 copies of my CV.

June 16

Vince was meant to come to connect the internet today, we’re still waiting.

June 20

Our neighbourhood Albany Park, isn’t as bad as we thought. It’s a mix of Mexican, Korean and Middle Eastern immigrant families. Eighty percent of the signage is in Spanish or broken English.

June 25

We’ve decided it was high time to furnish our abode, our plan to get drunk enough so we wouldn’t mind sleeping on wooden floors every night simply isn’t sustainable. Our first hurdle is to fit 16 of us into two bedrooms. Our solution was stacking us on top of one another.

A quick search upturned a family run furniture 100m from our front door. We struck a deal with the manager for six bunk beds. Just $150 per person, including a mattress, and they’d buy the frames back off us for $60 come September. Also, one of the girl’s managers donated a massive U-shaped sofa and some kind of relic of an air-conditioning unit. Disappointingly, our minuscule sitting room was only big enough for one third of the sofa.

June 30

I have an interview with Abercrombie today. They don’t employ sales staff, they employ ‘models’. Most of their staff have the Californian beach look. Being a former sheep farmer’s son from the Blackstairs Mountains, I’m not going to hold my breath.

July 3

Eventually found the key to our apartment’s mail box, opened up to find overdue gas and electricity bills. Vince is beginning to lose his sheen.

July 5

Our building is more and more resembling an Irish slum by the day. A glance out the window and you can see Carlow jerseys hanging on the washing lines. The block opposite is rapidly becoming Little Castlebar. We were all surprised by just how many Mayo people you can cram into a single bedroom. But the owners of all the kebab and liquor stores around are big fans of the Irish, they’ve even started supporting us in the Euros. I asked the Arabic guy in the liquor store for their smallest bottle of gin, he looked at me confused and said ‘You want a naggin, is it?’

July 6

Sweet Jesus it’s 40ºC outside.

July 8

In our continuing search to furnish our apartment we have just discovered the concept of a thrift store. The entire store is an archive of ‘useless crap that seemed like a really good idea in the 90’s’. Now, stepping into our apartment is like stepping back in time. It’s a palace of faux leather and tassels. And I also got my first ... Wexford hurling jersey! I just saw the little yellow sleeve with ‘Loch Garman’ poking out. I have no idea how it found its way there, but it looked lost and threatened, and as a Rackard I felt it my duty to rescue it.

July 20

Great news! I’ve eventually landed myself a job. After a few disastrous interviews I eventually got one for a company called Photogenic, they do the souvenir photography for the tourist traps in Chicago. !!I am working at Willis (Sears) tower taking and selling photographs — on the 103rd floor, making me one of the highest employees in the US!

Aug 6

I can really see the serious divide here between the lower and middle classes. It’s very cheap to eat badly here and quite expensive to live well. For ten dollars I could get a huge meal in Wendys and still have enough left over to get catatonically drunk on something that resembles a neon mixture of puddle-water and toxic waste. (‘Four Loko’.) But a reasonably healthy sandwich and a bottle of water could cost me about $12 and a few decent beers would cost me another $10. Poor quality consumer electronics are also very cheap and disposable. It’s obvious how the lower classes could easily get caught in a cycle of sitting in front of a screen, eating take-out, while the wealthy stop in Starbucks to grab an organic-latte, on the way to the gym.

Aug 16

Aside from all the Irish, our building is packed with all sorts of misfits. Next door we have a mysterious nocturnal Russian man who keeps insisting that we should drink vodka with him. He says that back in Russia only women drink tea. We politely explain that back in Ireland only women drink vodka. !

Aug 20

My time in Chicago is coming to an end. This summer has left me an incredibly changed person. I couldn’t begin to tell you everything I have seen and done this summer and the fact that my mother is reading this means even if I could, I probably wouldn’t. The last I heard of Vince he was sitting under a palm tree somewhere, counting out big wads of cash.