Between Worlds

Many international students move to Australia hoping that the next couple of years of their lives will be the best years ever. A lot of them leave feeling hopeless because they haven't had the quintessential university experience. For many of these students, their emotions of hope turn into survival.  

Radzi, 23, is one of these international students who moved to Melbourne from Malaysia with hopes and dreams of finding something consistent. As expected, she had a plan for how her university experience would go. However, she didn't know she'd be in the same boat as most international students facing bouts of loneliness. 

When she first moved here, she noticed a significant age gap between her and her peers in class, as they were younger than her.  

Even surrounded by friends, she still feels alone. Radzi says she feels alone even when doing the most mundane tasks like moving houses, "I think I feel the most lonely when I'm moving, and I don't know who to call... I feel like other people who are also moving they can just ask their friends. I feel like I don't know anybody to ask." 

She feels the same way even when she goes to events. Amirah shows up to events. She smiles. She makes conversation. But in a room full of people, she still feels like an observer. She says, "If I go to events, I will go there alone. In a crowded room, I feel especially lonely." 

With her cheerful personality, it's not too difficult for Radzi to make friends in Melbourne. But like she said, she doesn't feel she belongs in most friendship groups.  

She says, "when I look at my friend's social media, it's like I'm in their lives and seems like we get along well. But I'm not part of their core friend group, you know, I'm not even in the group chats." 

Before coming to Melbourne, Radzi had this expectation of what university life would be. She says, "before I came here, the thing that they always emphasise is to network. So, the expectation is if you approach someone and try to make conversation, get to know them, they will want to make friends with you. However, that's not the case." 

Finding a good coping mechanism is essential for survival, and since survival is key for every international student, many of them have interesting ways to keep their feelings at bay.  

Some of them cope with their loneliness well. For example, Radzi feels like she copes well with her loneliness and has figured out ways to keep herself happy as she lives away from home.  

Being so far from home is not as easy as it seems, and she copes by checking in with her family. "I call my family every time I feel lonely," she says. Radzi finds comfort in speaking to a particular family member. "I call my sister and after speaking with my sister, I feel like I can go on with my day again," says Radzi.  

She chooses this coping mechanism as Radzi prefers connecting with her family over other things because she prefers to go back to people that make her feel wanted and like she belongs.

When her family isn't free, Radzi engages in other activities.

"I go out usually and just explore the city and definitely look for events around Melbourne," she says.  

Since it's her final year of university, she's been branching out of her shell and doing much better than when she first started.  

Radzi says, "when I started uni, I thought I had to do it alone. I thought it was like self-directed learning. It means if you don't know something, you should figure it out yourself. But I've been asking for help." 

She also states that campus resources made a significant difference for her. Student services like CAPS (Counselling and Psychology Services) helped Radzi greatly. "When I first came here in my first week, I already went to a CAPS appointment. It was free and didn't have a long waiting list, so having psychological support made me feel better," she says.  

Similarly, Prasetyadi also had interesting coping mechanisms. He'd make small excuses to go out because there were days that he wouldn't leave his room, "I don't even interact with other housemates," he says, and then he'd come to realise at 9:00 pm that he hadn't interacted with a single person all day! 

He'd go to the markets the following day to combat those feelings of isolation because he longed to meet people. "I made excuses to go out to the markets like the Queen Victoria Market and would shop for groceries because I realised I needed those small interactions otherwise I would go crazy," he says.  

Prasetyadi would choose to go to small grocers and markets rather than big supermarket chains to have small interactions with people because "it felt real compared to going to Woolies and making your transactions on the machine." 

Like Radzi, he turns to his friends back in Indonesia to cope. Prasetyadi says, "most of the interactions I make throughout the day are online. I try to communicate with people back home through chat, and that's actually frustrating because there's a time difference of four hours." 

He finds it "frustrating" because he has to "sacrifice his sleeping schedule," but he finds it to be a minor hurdle in the bigger picture. He adds, "those are the sacrifices that I make just not to feel lonely, and I don't know whether that has been keeping me sane or that has actually worsened my isolation." 

Most international students find a way to keep their loneliness at bay and try out new activities to help them meet new people. 

Prasetyadi also tried his luck at speed friending so he could meet new people. However, his fear of rejection prevented him from going forward with the activity.  

Experts say that social isolation and loneliness seriously impact our health and wellbeing. People who lack social connections face a higher risk of early death.  

According to the WHO, social isolation and loneliness are also linked to anxiety, depression, suicide and dementia.

In older adults, loneliness is associated with a 50% increased risk of developing dementia and a 30% increased risk of incident coronary heart disease. Like most health issues, they have a domino effect on the community. 

Social isolation and loneliness do not just harm individuals, but they also impact the community negatively. Research shows that communities are safer, remain prosperous, and are governed effectively when the quality of social connections within their neighbourhoods, workplaces, and schools are high.  

According to Sarah Johnson at The Guardian, young people who experience loneliness at a school or university are more likely to drop out. It can lead to poorer economic outcomes and a domino effect of feeling unsupported in their overall lives. 

Koya's experience dealing with loneliness in a foreign country has been challenging. Still, he hopes other students don't experience the same and has advice for current and future international students.  

He suggests that joining university clubs helped combat his loneliness. He says, "the best strategy is to join clubs... all the people in clubs are there to make connections. They're the people who you're looking for to build relations with." 

He doesn't stop at reaching out to people at clubs but goes the extra mile to help out because Koya believes that "making a good impression on others is never going to backfire." 

That simple idea has worked in favour of Koya because people now know him.  

"Eventually, I saw that people recognised me and say, 'This guy is a good guy if you need any help,'" he said.  

Putting himself out there took a lot of effort, but it's paying off for Koya, as people around him have been taking notice of him. He says, "every event I go to, someone eventually spots me... people are recognising my effort, seeing me, and I'm in the back of their minds." 

He's glad he's overcome his loneliness and is now helping other students to do the same. He says, "one of the things I tell people is, if you're not going to approach someone, you're not going to make friends." 

McKay says, "People can feel lonely despite not being isolated. So you might have a lot of people physically around you, but still feel lonely and disconnected while integrated within a community." 

For a lot of international students that have moved abroad, it's clear that they're missing their usual support system, "for a lot of students, they'll be moving to a new environment where they don't have an established social circle. So that's already a clear, obvious reason why students might struggle," says McKay. 

Feelings of loneliness and mental health conditions don't just crop out of nowhere. They're usually preexisting conditions people deal with, and when an international student moves to a different country, it's only amplified. 

McKay says, "when people come from another country, it doesn't mean they leave behind the things that make them who they are... if they've come with preexisting mental health issues, that can make it much harder to engage in a new social environment." 

Accepting your loneliness is difficult for many international students, but recognising and making amends is a bigger task.  

McKay says, "A core thing is actually taking that risk and acknowledging that's uncomfortable for me, but it's also uncomfortable for everyone else and then engaging with opportunities when they're available is the key way to build connections." 

At the heart of it, he believes that universities should be doing a lot more to support their students, whether international or local, in helping their mental health. 

He says, "universities don't see themselves as providers of mental health support... their primary purpose is education. Mental health is an added bonus... if they were to change that attitude a bit, particularly at the very high levels I think we can make a real change there." 

McKay also says that universities should try to make those small changes as they would make a big difference in students' lives. For example, most international students aren't native English speakers and complete their studies in academic English, so it's difficult for them to express their feelings. 

"Academic English is a completely different thing to feeling English. If you can find people who can provide support in their native language, that can often make a big difference," says McKay. 

"Seeking help is a major barrier," he says. He's aware that many international students probably do not avail of the support that's made available to them. "Acknowledging that support may not always feel supportive, and that can happen for various reasons, but things like language barriers mean that you may not be able to communicate what you're feeling." 

He also noticed that survival is key for international students who study in Australia, "A big perceptive barrier for connecting is that students feel overwhelmed and that they don't have time. So, the primary thing they're here for is to get an education. They want to get good grades, but they also want to survive." 

When applying for university abroad, international students often forget to research other cultural norms within the country and usually stick to what they see through the media.  

McKay says that international students often forget a crucial fact when they apply for university in Australia: "Australia has a very strong emphasis on work and study." 

The emphasis on work and study changes the opportunity for connection and building informal communities, as many students studying here work and support themselves. 

Similarly, Michelle Lim, the scientific chair and CEO of Ending Loneliness Together, a not-for-profit organisation focused on addressing chronic loneliness in Australia, agrees that "loneliness is not just one person's problem," and that it's everyone's problem. 

She says, "for young people, we tend to find that sometimes loneliness can be driven by what we call maladaptive cognition," which basically means that people are more likely to have negative thoughts about relationships. 

Radzi, Prasetyadi, Stuck and Koya were all scared of rejection when they had to reach out to people. Having those limiting thoughts may "make you withdraw more as a result of those negative thoughts, you might feel more lonely, and so young people may inadvertently become victims of their own thoughts," says Lim. 

She also suggests that young people shouldn't feel dejected when a relationship doesn't take off almost immediately. Lim says, "it's really important that young people know that these relationships don't happen instantaneously."  

Relationships are meant to be nurtured and require a lot of work. Lim says, "they're all about the little pieces of effort and steps that we can take and then build over time." 

The CEO recommends that young people need to give themselves the "benefit of doubt" when it comes to making new friends. She says, "They might doubt themselves more, which is very consistent with where they're at developmentally." 

It's important to understand that loneliness doesn't solve itself overnight and that "people need certain ingredients for forming meaningful connections and have the safe space, the capacity to interact with people and access to free accessible spaces," says Lim.  

Fundamentally, "there's no one size fits all solution for loneliness," she says, "it's not just an individual solution. It's a relationship solution, it's a community solution and it's a societal solution." 

Lim encourages students to be open to new opportunities to overcome loneliness and "take different perspectives, have more adaptive thoughts around how to adjust to new situations, managing realistic expectations, so those sorts of things can help young people to break out of the cycle of loneliness." 

From her research, she's seen that social connections are vital in managing chronic disease. Lim says, "When we do help people with chronic disease gain those meaningful social connections, their capacity to manage the disease might be more effective."  

She urges young people to reach out because "it's important to build that social confidence to manage their social anxiety and the negative thoughts that might go with new social interactions."  

Researchers also say that findings regarding technology have been mixed, with some suggesting that social media might be a factor among young people. 

While social media can help build a sense of community and belonging, it can also contribute to isolation and emotional distress, depending on each experience.

In an interview with the Guardian, Dr Lim says, "it's not that people experience loneliness in and of itself, but the fact that we're living in an environment that means we're persistently lonely, in an environment where young people do not know where to seek the help that they need." 

Similarly, Professor Catherine Gomes at RMIT's School of Media and Communication, an expert on international student wellbeing, says, "The sense of loneliness is not about having people around you, but rather about people that are not surrounded with something or people that are familiar to them... it's more of maybe cultural isolation or linguistic isolation."  

She believes that international students would benefit from domestic students reaching out to bridge the gap and make them feel like they belong here in Australia.   

Gomes says, "part of integration is people integration, one of the issues is not about convincing international students, it's actually convincing domestic students." 

Gomes thinks universities should create more neutral programs that don't create distinctions between international and local students. She says it would help both parties "build meaningful connections." 

Like Lim and McKay, Gomes says a good way for international students to feel a sense of belonging is to have an effective support system. She says, "It's the social networks and the friends that they meet. Often international students create parallel societies which is a sense of community because of shared experiences." 

In Gomes's book, Parallel Societies of International Students in Australia, she says that parallel societies make international students "resilient, empowered and self-sufficient." 

Maybe the key to managing loneliness for international students would be the establishment of a parallel society. 

International students are the only ones who can understand each other's plight. On a ground level, The University of Melbourne Student Union's International (UMSU Intl) division aims to advocate for international students who are facing loneliness. 

Like the travelling DJ, the president of UMSU International, Jess Andriono and the Welfare office bearer of UMSU International, Kunal Dewani, are international students who focus on advocation for international students through policy decisions, mental health services and events. 

Touching upon loneliness, Andriono says that UMSU International has hosted programs to help international students alleviate their loneliness. There are programs each semester, and they're catered towards fostering and building connections centred on a hobby.  

"Our first one was a picnic and board games, so it was a chance for people to meet other people and bond over food and playing games," says Andriono. 

Their activities range from picnics to learning how to express yourself through voguing, a dance form, and making flower arrangements. Most of these events have one common goal: facilitating connections through activities. 

Andriono says, "we believe that fostering connections is really important among international students because it's a big issue to move to a new country when you don't know anyone." 

She also notes that there's a disconnect between the local and international students, especially those who start university in semester 2, which is why she's pushing students to create meaningful relationships no matter when they start the year through fun events. 

"There's more distance between international students and domestic students because the semester 2 intake is predominantly international students, and so, a lot of the times, most domestic students have already made friends," says Andriono. 

Mostly, students are already content with their friends and don't want to expand on their friend group, especially mid-semester when everyone's busy with university.  

"That's why connectedness is super important, and we hope to do that through all our events and initiatives, so not only the ones that are catered towards loneliness but also in general," she says. 

Another way the UMSU International team aims to bring domestic and international students together is by creating an initiative called 'International Brekkie', where they give away free breakfast every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. 

"We built a community around that in a sense where people who come up a lot end up knowing and talking to each other in line," says Andriono. 

Many international students feel like they can reach out to UMSU International as they deal with advocacy, special consideration, and other usual initiatives. 

Therefore, the usual support that international students seek is making new connections, and UMSU helps facilitate that naturally. 

"We try to make a lot of the events relatively on a smaller scale so people can connect with each other meaningfully but also for the larger ones, we want to ensure people feel represented," says Andriono. 

International students feel seen when they're represented, and UMSU takes keen notice of that. 

"Cultural events like the Night Market would involve a lot of food stalls and performances that are quite representative of the international student cohort in general," she says.

"Having that representation and having that opportunity to reach out and to congregate as many people as possible from diverse backgrounds could really help people meet other people that make them feel connected," adds Andriono. 

Another big initiative by UMSU International is Union Mart, a food bank that provides food and other household items free of cost for students. 

"As per the cost of living survey that the welfare department ran in 2024, 78% of students were served last year at Union Mart," says Devani. 

UMSU hosts a speed friending event at the beginning of every semester so people can reach out and make new friends. However, Devani has noticed that speed friending occurs very naturally throughout the year in their queues at Union Mart. 

"We have been trying to spark a few conversations amongst the people in queues because at Union Mart people start lining up about an hour before we open, so we try to speak to people, but then we realised it automatically happens because people stand and sit next to each other when they're waiting for so long," says Devani. 

During the usual speed friending events that occur during orientation, Andriono noticed that most of the sessions get booked out quickly.  

"I've heard from several people that international students go back almost every session even semester after semester, they still go back because they find that it's a meaningful way to make friends," she says. 

However, Andriono does consider that it's not a one-size-fits-all solution. She says, "There are some methods that work for some people and methods that don't work for other people, so I think both UMSU and UMSU International are trying to use as many methods as possible to see what sticks." 

Focusing on UMSU's broader objectives, Devani says that UMSU has a program called Collectives, which encourages students to meet and hang out with other students. It also urges domestic students to connect with international students through common ground. The initiative prides itself on inclusivity and having space for everyone. 

 These collectives happen weekly, with different groups hosting on other days, and there sure is a place for everyone, especially the underrepresented. 

"The Collectives are aiming to try and solve the problem of isolation and the difficulties in building connections with other university students through events like these," says Devani.