This story has been submitted through our admin team as the person did not want their name shown, etc.
Please remember that anyone can sign up and post anonymously too.
Back home, I was never alone for long. There was always a cousin calling, a friend arriving unannounced, someone asking whether I had eaten. Here, in my room, silence had a different weight. I missed my family so much that ordinary moments became difficult: seeing a mother and daughter shopping together, hearing a familiar song, or catching the smell of spices that almost, but not quite, resembled the food from home.
I missed the food itself more than I expected. Not simply the taste, but what it meant: warmth, routine, care. I learned to cook in my shared kitchen, trying to recreate meals from memory. Sometimes I got it right. More often than not, I ate something bland while watching my parents on a video call, pretending I was settling in better than I was.
At university, everyone seemed confident. People spoke quickly in seminars, laughed at jokes I understood a few seconds too late, and used expressions I had never heard in any English textbook. I had studied English for years, but suddenly it felt as though every sentence was an exam. I rehearsed questions in my head before speaking. I worried about my accent. I worried that people would assume I was less intelligent if I paused for the right word. That pressure made me quieter. And being quieter made me lonelier.
There were parties where I felt peer pressure to drink, to be louder, to act as though I understood every social rule. I did not always know how to say no without sounding rude, or how to join a conversation that had started before I arrived. The culture was hugely different: the humour, the independence, the pace of friendship, even the way people made plans. Sometimes I felt welcome; other times, I felt like a visitor in a place where everyone else had received an instruction manual.
The feeling followed me beyond campus. As an international student, I became very aware of money, visas, work restrictions, and how I might be seen as different before anyone knew me. At times, I felt unequal not because someone said it directly, but because I had to work harder to prove that I belonged (or was that my own mind playing with my worries?). It could feel like being a second-class citizen: present in the room, contributing to the room, but never entirely certain that the room was made for me.
Job applications made that anxiety sharper. I spent hours preparing for interviews, trying to translate my experience into the language employers expected. As a non-native applicant, I wondered whether a small hesitation or an unfamiliar accent would overshadow everything I had achieved. I knew I had skills, ambition and ideas. But the question was always there: would they see them before they saw that I came from somewhere else?
One grey afternoon, after another rejection email, I sat in the library and realised I had been treating struggle as a personal failure. I thought I was the only one missing home, doubting my English, fearing the future. But I was not. So many international students carry the same invisible weight as they try to look brave.
That is why the incredible organisation InStudents matters so much. Founded by Kritesh Bisht, InStudents is working to support international students across UK universities before they arrive, throughout their university experience, and as they move towards graduation and employment.
Through its PathFinder project https://www.wearepathfinder.org and other initiatives, it helps students navigate the journey from deciding to study in the UK to building a life and career here. For me, that support represents something simple but powerful: a reminder that asking for help does not mean I do not belong. It means I am learning how to belong in two places at once.
InStudents has made me look at life in the UK differently: that I do fit in, that I am valued, and that my skills and I are my brand to take forward and become a part of the wider UK economy and continue to learn and become like the wonderful Kritesh Bisht and his amazing volunteers.
Thank you all 🙏
If this piece moved you, let the writer know.