As one of our eight Indonesian International Student Mobility Awards (IISMA) scholarship awardees, Mathena reflects on her time studying abroad at Queen Mary University of London from September to December 2023.

Studying abroad sounds wonderful as a concept, but in experience, it’s a completely different kind of magic. London has always occupied the top of my bucket list since I was little, though I never truly considered how or when I could expect to reach that dream. So when the announcement came around that I got accepted to Queen Mary University of London through the Indonesian International Student Mobility Awards (IISMA) program, my heart somersaulted inside me with pure, immense happiness. I couldn’t get a wink of sleep for the next two days, feeling like my body was constantly humming with adrenaline with the thought that I would fly to London in the next few months. Not just to visit, but to stay and to study in the city for three months.

Though on the day of my departure, that excitement was eventually washed away with anxiety. When I carried my luggage with me to the gate of the plane, and I looked over my shoulder, finding and realising that my parents and my family were no longer with me, for the first time in those exhilarating months of waiting and pining, I was overwhelmed with fear. I was hit with the realisation that I was on my own now, on my way to a completely foreign country with equally foreign people and to an unfamiliar environment. On the flight to Heathrow, I kept gripping on my armrests, having little to no sleep, and this time, it was because of the intense agitation that made my stomach flip and turn. I had never traveled that far without my family before, and to live without the constant, familiar presence of them was a new reality. Just to give a little background context, I’m the youngest child. Back at home, my independence has always been
limited, therefore taking away my chance of gaining any. Trusting myself became an issue when I was not given enough of it by the people closest to me.

The first couple of weeks of my experience in London was the complete opposite of how I imagined my life would be living in my dream city. Loneliness was the first to greet me, then helplessness followed suit. I felt like I didn’t belong, I didn’t know how to navigate myself around the corners of the place, lacking the ability to say the right thing to the unfamiliar people concentrated around me. However, I finally found my feet on the third week of my journey in London, once time had passed for a while and had slowly shaped me into a person capable of growing. Even when I initially found it difficult believing in myself, this studying abroad experience has given me enough reason for me to start doing so.

Not a lot of time has passed since the programme, but there are so many things about myself that I have discovered. The smallest things, the simple ones, are the ones that make it count. Things like how I can wake up at 8 A.M. everyday without an alarm, because I always make sure to uphold my responsibility of living alone by getting enough sleep the night before to avoid being sick. Things like how I can do weekly grocery shop on my own to Lidl by taking the D7 bus from the A Mile End station to Pixley Street, how I can get up from my bed and cook something to my heart’s content, how I can nurse myself back to health during a horrible fever without the help of my mother, how I can take myself anywhere around the city with the bus or the tube without confusing the variety of lines of the expanded underground. Things like how I can make friends with people in my classes, people who come from each and every corner of the world, who have different backgrounds and stories of their own but by some cosmic force, we’re all put in the same room and situation right there together to share the same experience. And how powerful that feeling is when you make a home for yourself, in a place that you’ve never been, thousands of miles away from your comfort zone. How wonderful it is to build a life on your own, to set up a completely new routine by and for yourself. How beautiful it is to see the person you have become, how far you can go, and how capable of anything you actually are. Anything.

My time studying abroad at Queen Mary University of London has taught me not only to trust in others but to trust in myself, to open up more and to not see it through the lens of fragility, to laugh at my own mistakes and to move on, to not take myself too seriously but always strive for the best, and to live through small or big inconveniences. What I have come to learn is that we can’t be brave without being vulnerable first, so to everyone who is reading this, I would say enjoy the butterflies, enjoy the fear in the face of having something new, because that is the moment you know that your life is about to change.