In this blog mini series, we’ve asked a couple of our international doctoral students to share their advice and top tips for settling into a new country for a doctoral degree. Below we’ve shared Tommy Bui’s advice!
Upending and lugging your entire life in a bindle across oceans to study is a daunting task to say the least. Alas, when you’re nudged (or catapulted, rather) out of your comfort zone, you’re left with few options beyond plum just making your current destination your new home away from home. Wedge yourself in that liminal space between both here and there and harbouring that sense of the old homestead in your heart wherever you may roam.
That’s precisely what I did. There was that initial culture shock of looking the wrong way when crossing traffic and playing pickleball whenever I left off campus. There was also the occasional bewilderment over the language like what cigarettes are called here and the continuous correction that I do not have an uncle named Robert. I quickly learned that I needed to re-learn English quickly.
But you swiftly become desensitised to the all-out newness. Paramount was the establishment of new routines on my newly arrived shores. And the surest way to gain instant familiarity with fresh surroundings is duly and urgently getting profoundly lost with a good wander around the city. Exploring the nooks and crannies and unknown gustatorial gems that you’ll come to rely on ahead, such as where the best cockles and rarebit can be procured and which chip shop will heap on the generous taters out of sympathy for your fish-out-of-water resting grimace.
Again, staving off the homesickness has one ready-made remedy and that’s adopting your new city as your newfangled home. Become well-acquainted with the unfamiliar. Put yourself out there and you’ll be surprised how far a smile and a kind word will take you with fellow students. And before you know it, you’ll be integrated with all you encounter.
So ditch those headphones or yank your head out of that book every now and again. Sure, you have a lot on your plate with your studies, courses and general mad scramble of the day to day of a doctoral student. But before you can change the world with your research, you have to give the world a chance to change you first.
