Building relationships as an international postgraduate student

Hi everybody my name is Cheryl Chingosho and I'm the Vice president for Welfare at the University of South Wales Students Union.

I'm making this video just to share a little bit about my experience at University. It didn't start of so great... I'm an international student I came to the UK around 2 years ago it was just particularly difficult settling down and just getting to make friends and just getting on with my course. It was really difficult for me to adapt to the educational standard of learning and it was very difficult for me to just settle down and find a community and connect with people in a way that is meaningful, so I'm making this video just to share some tips on what works well, what works for me at least so maybe you can have at least a better experience than I did.

So, I came to the university and I had a lot of financial pressures on me already. I wasn't really in a good place mentally because I just felt like there was a lot expected of me. I expected to get like A's and A stars in all of my tests and assignments because that's just what I thought is expected and I would put so much pressure on myself and that was a thing that made my mental health decline, particularly because doing your Masters is very academically challenging on top of having to work part-time if you need to support yourself financially and as well as just being so far away from home.

You know your support structures are, I don't want to say no longer there but you don't really want to burden your friends and family just constantly saying 'oh no I need some support, I need some support', so I was trying to take on a lot of stuff on my own but I was not doing, I was not dedicating enough effort in making good friendships so I'm just making this video to show what actually helped me get out of my comfort zone and got to meet people who made me have a transformative experience.

I got involved with the Students Union and I got elected as the Chair of Student Council. This was an amazing opportunity for me because it allowed me to meet other student leaders and I got to really engage more in like the student voice and student leadership and getting to be able to make a change for other people and that made me feel a sense of fulfillment because as much as I did have a lot of like anxieties and a lot of issues I was dealing with as an individual, just being part of a group effort that would contribute to making the community better made me feel complete and I would 100% encourage whoever who's watching this video to get involved in what students are doing collectively and student efforts that just work towards making University experience so much better for everybody.

It was also really helpful letting go of that expectation of what it was like being the 'ideal' university student and I started to accept what my experience was. I let go of the idea that I had to be getting A's and A stars in all of my tests and assignments because I have a particularly unique way of studying and when you put so much pressure on yourself it just makes your performance really poor.

You are doing well and sometimes when things get overwhelming, it's only expected for you to feel that push back on your academic side so I do want to encourage you to not put so much pressure on yourself doing a Masters course. Getting a degree is very difficult and you're doing the best that you can so I would say that added pressure just makes you feel more overwhelmed.

What also helped for me was getting again involved with our SU but in this way just getting to meet people through Society events so I would make the effort of going to these events and introducing myself to people getting myself known and just sharing my hobbies my interest and a lot of people will start to come to me and share their contact details with me and that's how I got to connect with people a lot.

I know it's not much but those are just the three things that really helped improve my student experience and they allowed me to make a lot of different friends and I honestly would say that you're not alone if you're struggling with your mental health.

You're definitely not alone and it pays a lot to just put yourself out there, take yourself out of your comfort zone and just like you know try getting to like talking to people so yeah those are my tips of what helped me to make friends.