PSY102a_F2020

Assignment: How students adapt to university life and the Blagoevgrad environment?

Desislava Veneva and Lora Klassanova

It is not an easy task to adapt to a whole new way of living, especially if you come from a
different country and most of the people you are going to live with don’t speak your native
language. University life could be an as equally exciting experience as a stressful one since
the whole environment of a person is drastically changed. They have to live independently,
away from their family and friends. As every individual has a sense of self, which can be
defined either through their physical and psychological characteristics or/and their social and
interpersonal affiliation, they also possess the skills to define in which social group they
would fit in, how it is acceptable to behave in a certain social group and how to handle a
social conflict. Changing the environment fundamentally could also change the way an
individual sees themselves and their sense of being part of the society, simply because the
common society for the individual has been changed. To understand how students adapt to
university life (in AUBG) and the atmosphere in Blagoevgrad is our goal. The high diversity
in religion, race, and culture among the students could provide interesting results to our
research. The questions that we will try to answer are:
 How do students cope with the new tasks they have?
 What is their reaction to the new environment?
 Do they manage to live at their own?
 Do they cope to manage their financials?
 Do they have friends and how open are they to their new acquaintances?

We decided to make our approach by using the Social Interactionism perspective. The SI
approach includes short questions we asked some of the students and observation of the
participants of the survey in their ‘natural habitat’ with their permission, of course. The
questions we asked them could be separated into two main categories: more general and more
personal ones. The quantity of the questions is not much; however, they will be enough to let
us analyze the attitude of the participants towards university life and their new home. We will
present our questions in this table:

General questions Personal questions

What do you like the most in the campus
environment?
Is there something you would like to change
in the city’s environment?
Do you find it difficult to manage your
time?
Do you enjoy your staying here so far?
How do you feel being more independent
now?
Do you find it difficult to make friends?
Do you find it difficult to get close with
Bulgarians? (for the international students)
Do you wish to change something in your
current way of living?
Do you regret coming to this university?
While analysing the answers, we noticed a common trend. A frequent answer from the
“general” questions is that some of the students do not enjoy the atmosphere in Blagoevgrad;
however, they are quite impressed by the campus. We couldn’t say we are surprised as some
of our closer friends expressed the same opinion. The reason is the strained relations between
the two universities in the city. Display of deviant behaviour such as fighting has occurred not
once. Moreover, international students sometimes feel a bit perplexed when they get to know
some typical traits of Bulgarian behaviour. The students also shared that they find it quite
easy to study in the campus since the environment is “study-friendly” and tranquil. Moreover,
the people we interviewed confessed that they were able to manage their time well at the
beginning of the semester, however, when a month and a half passed (they were already in an
established social group, they got to know the other people and became more comfortable
around them) they got distracted a bit from their studies. We did not encounter students that
weren’t content with their decision to stay in the university. We must address how the current
situation with the coronavirus affects communication among the students. During some of our
classes, we got to meet students from North Korea, India, etc. However, they weren’t able to
study on-campus since the pandemic was a great hurdle for their traveling. Even though we
have talked to these people, we weren’t able to make an appropriate connection. Moreover, a
girl from North Korea shared that the time zone was also an obstacle for her studies since her
lectures start in the evening. 

When we asked the more “personal” questions freshmen admitted that they indeed have
experienced a shock since they have much more freedom. Virtually all of them feel quite
good at living an independent life, and they accept the responsibilities that come with it. First-
year international students (mainly from Macedonia, Albania, and Ukraine) explained that
they quickly found friends from their native countries. Moreover, they shared that Bulgarians
are quite friendly and kind, but whenever they gather in large groups, they stop speaking in
English which makes communication with them more difficult. When we observed students
from different countries in their “natural habitat” we noticed that people from different
countries have different manners, jokes, and behaviour. So, it is natural that the cultural
background could be an obstacle; people from different countries do communicate but do not
get as close. “Why is that happening?” is the question we tried to answer ourselves. Students
have been raised differently, taught different traditions and beliefs, according to the country
they were born in. They cannot change their mindset, since it is something they have learned
from a very young age. The cultural background barrier is a hard one to overcome, but there
are always exceptions, which explains that even it is hard, a close relationship like these are
possible.

We suspect that all of the interrogated people have a clear cognition of the situation, but we
expect to encounter two alternatives of their attitudes regarding their emotions. Additionally,
we will try to separate the group of our participants into two smaller groups according to their
emotional response to the questions.
 1-st
The first group will consist of people who
are accepting the situation without an inner
conflict, people who have no problem being
independent, who easy getting used to a new
social environment and easily make friends.
2-nd
The second group is expected to behave like
the first group but with obvious inner
conflict regarding the big change. They
might be shyer, with problems to find a
convenient company, not ready to live on
their own. We also will be careful when
asking this group personal questions.

Our project will not be focused on the first group since it tends to adapt faster. We will focus
on the second group. They are not likely to get used to the new environment quickly and our
group project is more interested in it. The participants from the second group will have to
adapt to their new standard and way of life and we will observe more closely them in order to
understand their way of coping with more complex social problems.

During the Orientation Week at AUBG freshmen were invited to a lawn party, where they
were asked various questions. From these questions, we understood that some first-year
students have already been living by themselves before graduating high school. These people
seemed quite comfortable even if it was the first day they arrived at the university. They were
calm, outspoken, and socially confident. At the beginning of the semester, the difference
between extroverts and introverts was quite visible. Some people seemed unsure of what they
are supposed to do, preferred not to attend many events, and did not like being the centre of
attention. However, when some time passed the line between shy and outgoing people started
to fade. People separated into smaller groups where they shared mutual interests and beliefs.

In these hard times when going to “Underground” is only possible through Zoom, students
joined forces to communicate safely with each other as much as possible. Even though online
events are quite common, more introverted students face a problem. It is much easier to get to
know a person when you are in front of them. You can observe their body language and facial
expressions. However, during online meetings, some people prefer to turn off their cameras
and not to speak. Of course, we cannot interfere in the communication between students, but
we can think of ways to make it better. For this reason, we thought that personal meetings
with the appropriate safety measurements are more suitable. For example, movie nights,
drawing lessons, or sports events that do not require close distance such as volleyball,
dodgeball, etc. Just like hybrid classes, these events could be executed simultaneously on-
ground and online, so international students that did not have the opportunity to live in the
campus could participate.

To finish our research, we would say that all in all, students did a great job of adapting to
university life. Few of them had any struggles in finding friends, and as the AUBG
community is so diverse everyone eventually finds a place in a certain social group (most
often the group members are from the same country). We would conclude that we got to talk
to students from all around the world which contributed to how interesting this research came
out.