Hey there! 

My name is Sahil and I am a second year Aerospace Engineering student here at the University of Surrey. I am going to be sharing with you all of my experiences of university life at Surrey, living in Guildford, being an international student in the UK and lots more! But as it would be pretty weird finding out about my university life without any context, I feel I should tell you a little bit more about myself and my journey to the University of Surrey. 

So as you already know, my name is Sahil. I am a 20 (almost 21) year old engineering student at Surrey. I am originally from India, but I was born and brought up in the city of Dubai. I had lived in Dubai up until the age of 18 after which it was time for head to university. Understandably so, I face the same problems which most international students will relate to, which is finding it very difficult to answer the questions: “Where are you from? Where do you live? Where is home?”. My answers usually keep changing according to which country I am at the time, which leaves a lot of people confused when they try to work out the geography of my life. However, I have to say that I feel really blessed to have such a mixture of places and societies as it has allowed me to meet people from all over the world and learn more about their cultures and backgrounds. 

Towards the end of my schooling when I had to start applying to different universities I had a very clear mindset. Since the age of 5 my dream job was to become an Astronaut, and during school I really enjoyed studying physics. I was also really passionate about fixing things and thinking of solutions, which is what the main job description of any engineer is. So it was very easy for me to decide upon which course I wanted to pursue. I also had a clear mindset that I want to continue my higher education in UK. This was mainly because of how reputable the country’s education sector is and the positive experiences I had heard of from my seniors in school who studied in UK. 

 I would like to say that I personally had not done much research on the UK lifestyle as I would’ve had to adjust to any place I would be attending university at, however if you are currently in the process of applying to universities I would most definitely recommend doing a bit of research on the lifestyle of whichever place you’re looking to apply to. While it might not affect your decision to apply to a certain place, it will definitely prepare you and make you a bit more familiar with the place if your application is successful. Because when it actually hit me that I am going to be moving to a whole new country and will be living there alone I was already scared. This was also because I have always been in the same school and house my entire life. So I didn’t really know how good I would be at adjusting to a completely new environment in which I would be spending at least the next 3-4 years. Especially since I was moving from a fast-paced city like Dubai to a town in England. I was definitely not ready to make this shift at the time, but after being here for over two and a half years, I can say that I now appreciate the different aspects of both life in Guildford and Dubai.  

I feel like I have said a lot about myself so I shall stop now. I hope you have enjoyed reading a bit about me. Over the next few weeks I hope to be posting more blogs sharing my experiences with studies, food, getting around and just the UK international student life in general. See you next week!