So you want to be very clear about how much you're willing and
able to spend on housing and what the options are nearby your work.
Thinking about safety considerations which vary greatly from country to country and
work site to work site.
So make sure that you have those housing conversations early on, and then also
conversations about travel, when you can go, is there any flexibility in that,
how much travel you're going to have to do on the ground, and
how that's going to be arranged.
So I talk about clarity and being as clear as possible, and
I have a funny anecdote to go with this.
I once had a student who was working with a colleague who
has a number of projects in Puno, Peru.
And this student was very, very excited to go and had told all of his friends that
she was going to Puno and was starting to prepare her trip.
And about a month before she was due to leave,
she started talking with her faculty member about her trip to India, and I say,
cool, that's interesting, when are you going to India?
And she looks at him with concern like, it's for your project I'm going to Pune.
And he's like, no, you're going to Puno, Peru not Pune, India.
So while this isn't likely to happen to you especially
now that I've told you this tale.
You want to make sure that you're clear Isabelle about as much as you can be so
that you don't have to rearrange your tickets, retell all your friends and
family that you're not in fact going to India like you thought but rather Peru,
which is on a completely different continent.
So you want to think about negotiating your scope of work very early on.
A scope of work is a formal agreement document that specifies
all of the criteria of a contract between a student and the faculty member or
a supervisor.
It very clearly documents your project requirements, major milestones,
deliverables which we'll talk more about later, and products, documents, reports,
that are expected to be provided by you, the student.
So when you're negotiating the scope of work,
there are a number of things you should consider.
What was in the position description that initially attracted you to
this particular project, if there even was one.
Sometimes projects are just word of mouth.
If there were things in that original position description that you're
interested in, make sure that you talk early on about those key things.
Because oftentimes, faculty members or supervisors will put a whole slew of
possible things that you could work on in the project, but might not necessarily
need the thing that you picked out that you're interested in right now.
So make sure that you're very clear about what it was that interested
you in this project.
Think about what changes might have occurred in the project if any,
and this can really span the gamut of types of changes.
As there have been IRB delays has a major natural disaster hit the country
where you're going to be.
Has funding been delayed?
Any of these things could affect your scope of work.
So if you have honest conversations early on about where your project is,
that will really help you as you're negotiating what you're going to do.
Think very carefully about your program, and practicum requirements, and
if you're using this international experience to fulfill those requirements.
Make sure that you have clearly outlined that with your supervisor or
your faculty member so that they know what it is that they need to do, and
you need to do, in order to fulfill that requirement.
