Challenges at university: an international student's perspective

 
Related module:

Explore the ways you can become independent, meet new people and make the most use of the university location and services, as three international students share the challenges they faced at university.

 

0.09 - 0.52 - Being self-sufficient

Robinson learnt to take his own initiative when adjusting to the studying culture at the UK. He shares what he learnt about independence when making notes during lectures.

0.57 - 1.34 - Being part of a community experience

Preethi shares how connecting to different cultures and people through societies can be an unexpected way of making new friends.

1.40 - 2.40 - Giving yourself time to adjust

Find out how Ridhi made use of the university’s services in the first 8-10 months of moving to a new country, to adapt to the culture at university.

Challenges at university: an international student’s perspective

Being self-sufficient

Robinson [student 1]

Being away from home like it is so far from my house like, I'm an international student. I'm coming from India, [it] is a part of Kerala. It's a part of India and southern part of India.

So it is far from here [England]. And also we got more friends here. But even though it is so far from home, it is entirely different from our study, our learning type. And so while I'm studying here, I struggle is like something like the same thing.*

We don't have that much notes or that much [given to us from] lecture class. We have to work on it.**

There is lecture class, but no one is going to come and telling that you have to do [this work] you have to learn this, this point is good for you. [For example, saying] this point is better for like, 'why am I doing an assignment?' No one is going to [tell you]. We have to find it, we have to keep in note or we have to keep all these notes properly.

 

--- Notes ---

*I struggle with the same thing

**’It’ being, the work we decide to do in our independent study time

 

Being part of a community

Preethi [student 2]

You know, to socialise it's kind of hard [at the start] and university makes it easier along with the societies and the communities they bring up with the unions.*

Or like me, [the societies make it] easier to meet new people and get to know them. So, we do have [societies] like dance society, UEL [University of East London] dance society and UEL [University of East London] Tamil society.

That's why I'm joined in, I'm a member of that [society]. My friends started that society to get more even to know different people from that.**

So that's how it started. And it's now a large community. I mean, I got to know a lot of people, different people from different places.

 

--- Notes ---

*[That is the] student union [societies] that our university provides.

**to get to know even more different people.

 

Giving yourself time to adjust

Ridhi [student 3]

Prioritization is like the most challenging task. It took me like around 8 to 10 months to really cope with the day to day activities at the university: managing your academic task, the other things.

So firstly, I have taken my time. When I came to this country, it's very new, and I have to adapt in a new culture. So I took my time, like I took for 4 to 5 months just to know about this place [University and the location] like and how it goes. I started exploring.

Firstly, as I live in university accommodation. This gave me an additional privilege to explore the whole university that each service. The first day I visited the career zone and then I visited the library. So I explored each place possible [at university] that I can in that time, that period of time.

And so, after exploring the university I started exploring the London City, the entire part. So in this way I adapted myself to the culture and then I started like making a schedule, to prioritize my tasks.