“Best year yet”, that is what the sign at the entrance of my student accommodation said when I first arrived in the United Kingdom in September 2025. I couldn’t have known, standing there, that the sign was right. I had two huge suitcases with me. In them was my whole life, packed as if I were about to stay forever, but at the same time, as if I would leave tomorrow. I was prepared for this transition to be hard; I had experienced it before when I moved to Germany for my Erasmus studies. The only difference was that now I had a career behind me. At twenty, I had nothing to leave.
Being there wasn’t a coincidence: I had worked hard to get the Chevening Scholarship, didn’t get it the first time, didn’t give up, and applied again. I am a firm believer that things happen for a reason and at the right time. For me, getting the scholarship and coming abroad for my Master’s studies happened exactly at the right moment. I knew that when I opened the door to my dorm room and entered student life again, after six years away from the title ‘student ‘. I was eager to learn, meet new people, and experience life in Brighton: a city that felt like home from day one.
When I had to choose which university I wanted to study at, I was sure it was the University of Sussex. I had done my research and knew that that’s where I wanted to study Gender and Media, a program that offered me the best of both worlds: journalism and gender studies. I haven’t questioned this decision at any point. I have had the chance to meet incredible professors and lecturers, as well as students from all around the world. Among many other things, I founded an international feminist media platform called Page19. If leaving my career behind at the beginning felt like a loss, now it feels like a win. I have created a platform to cover news that is not always a headline in mainstream media. I have given a voice to women who want to share their side of the story and are not given the space elsewhere.
I have lived my entire life in a patriarchal society, and Brighton is the first place where I actually felt that I belonged. I was normal here. Nobody was questioning my views on gender or women’s rights because they were fighting the same battles. A sense of relief emerged when speaking, as I received nods of understanding rather than backlash, accusations, or finger-pointing. I had to do a reflective essay for one of my modules at the university, and this is what I wrote: “Deciding to come to the UK to study gender offered me a new sense of belonging, a reality where I feel normal and where my ideas are not seen as radical, but rather as part of a broader and legitimate discourse on social justice”.
Entering the world of a student again in a completely new country has its challenges. There is this feeling of loneliness when moving to a country where you know nobody. Everything was new to me: how education worked here, the environment, and the constant pressure to prove to myself that I had made the right decision. I remember my professor talking very openly about the sexualisation of women’s bodies in the movies, and I remember the time when my professor back home skipped the chapter on human biology because he considered it a shameful thing. I then realised that it was not only miles that separated me from my home country, but a whole system of values.
Sometimes it felt like I was stuck. I could only see the progress looking back from a distance. One year can feel like a moment sometimes, but also like a lifetime. There is this pressure at the beginning to make the most of this year abroad. That can sometimes be overwhelming in a place with so much to see and do. Until I found my way through it. Then, after a while, I realised I was surrounded by people who now feel like home, with the loneliness no longer there. My dorm room is no longer empty; I have filled it with memories. And my heart is full. Now I’m returning home; it really was my best year yet.