I almost didn’t come.

I keep returning to that thought whenever I look around my room in the UK and try to make sense of how I ended up here, thousands of miles from home. It’s strange to sit at my desk, with my student ID on the table and lecture notes open on my laptop, and remember how close I came to saying no to all of this.

Back in India, it started with an email: “We are pleased to offer you a place…” I must have opened it a hundred times. Each time, my chest tightened with the same mix of excitement and fear. On one side, there was the version of me who had dreamed of studying abroad, of walking across a foreign campus, of proving to myself that I could do something bigger than what people expected. On the other side was the version of me who worried about everything: money, distance, responsibility, what my family would have to sacrifice, what would happen if I failed.

Late at night, lying under the fan listening to the familiar sounds of my neighbourhood, I would stare at the ceiling and think, “Maybe I should just stay.” I knew exactly what staying looked like: the safe job, the familiar roads, the comfort of knowing where I belonged. Coming here was a question mark. And that is what made it terrifying.

But on 20 January 2026 at 4:00 AM, I walked into Bangalore airport with two big suitcases, hugged my family tighter than I ever had before, and chose the question mark.

The shock hit as soon as I arrived in the UK winter. The cold felt personal. The sky looked different. Even the air smelled unfamiliar. I remember standing outside the airport, shivering slightly despite my layers, watching strangers pull their luggage with a confidence I didn’t feel. For the first time, it really sank in: I’m not just visiting. I’m supposed to build a life here.

Those first days were full of small challenges that somehow felt huge.

I had to figure out buses when I wasn’t even sure which direction the city centre was in. I stared at road signs and hesitated at crossings, trying to remember to look the “other” way. At the supermarket, I stood at a self-checkout machine, confused by coins, buttons, and automated instructions that everyone else seemed to understand instantly. I pressed the wrong thing, panicked, and had to wave someone over to help me. They were kind, but I still walked out of the store feeling clumsy and painfully foreign.

In India, I knew my city like the back of my hand. I knew which shortcut to take, where to buy the best snacks, which auto driver might overcharge me just by the way he looked at the meter. Here, I was suddenly a beginner at almost everything.

In my room at night, when the heating hummed softly and the world outside my window was too quiet, doubts came back in waves. What if I had made a huge mistake? What if I never felt comfortable here? What if I didn’t find my place?

But threaded through the confusion, there were also moments of gentleness that I didn’t expect.

A kind professor walked me from one building to another, when they saw me repeatedly checking the campus map on my phone which led me to the Visa checkpoint at David Wilson Library, I entered the building with excitement and nervousness at the same time and then eventually got my student ID which made me feel belonged. I was trying to get into my very first lecture classroom but couldn’t get the classroom right, then enters my saviour a “course mate” smiled and said, let me help you find your classroom and helped me find it. We parted ways to our classes and then she goes, “If you ever get lost again, just text me”, and gave me her contact number. None of these gestures made a dramatic story, but they softened the sharp edges of those early days.

Then the classes began, and with them came a different kind of challenge.

Back home, I was the “good student.” I knew how to prepare for exams, how to write answers the way teachers wanted, how to treat books as authority. Suddenly, I was in a seminar where the first question was, “So, what did you make of the reading?” And people actually answered. Not by repeating what the author said, but by questioning it, arguing with it, comparing it to their own experiences.

I sat there with so many thoughts in my head and absolutely no idea how to say them out loud, but I eventually did which caught the eyes of my professor!

It wasn’t just the language, though that played a part. 

For the first couple of weeks, I mostly listened. I took careful notes, nodded along, smiled when someone made eye contact, and only spoke when I couldn’t avoid it. My answers were shorter than they needed to be. I played it safe, because safe felt easier than visible.

Then, one afternoon, I received feedback on a written assignment. Alongside the usual comments, one line stood out: “You have a really interesting perspective. I’d like to hear more of this in class.”

It was a small sentence, but it sat with me. Maybe the way I saw things — shaped by Indian news, Indian social media, Indian conversations at my family’s dining table — wasn’t out of place here. Maybe it was exactly what I was supposed to add.

After that, I set myself a simple rule: speak once in every seminar. Just once. It didn’t have to be perfect or profound. It could be a question, a comparison, or even, “Where I’m from, this looks a bit different.”

The first few times my heart pounded. I could hear my own breathing as I waited for a pause in the discussion. But every time I did speak, something unexpected happened: people listened. Sometimes they wrote down what I said. Sometimes they asked follow-up questions. Sometimes someone would say, “I never thought about it that way.”

Slowly, the room changed for me. It stopped feeling like a stage where I might embarrass myself and started feeling like a shared space where my background actually added value. I realised I didn’t have to sound like everyone else to belong. My accent, my references, the way I framed examples — those were part of my identity, not problems to hide.

Homesickness, for me, hasn’t come with big dramatic breakdowns. It has arrived quietly, in small, sharp moments.

It’s in the walk home from class when the air is cold and my hands are stuffed in my pockets, and I suddenly think of the warmth of my house in India, the noise of the television in the background, my parents talking in the next room. It’s in scrolling through photos of friends meeting up back home and realising I am no longer part of those everyday scenes. It’s in a craving for food that no restaurant here makes exactly the way my family does.

Because I arrived in late January, there weren’t big campus festivals waiting for me. No Diwali lights, no huge celebrations to soften the landing. In a way, that forced me to face the reality of this new life honestly. I had to find comfort in smaller things: Chai at Shri Krishna Vada Pav, from Percee Gee building, a long call with a friend back home where we laughed about silly things and, for an hour, the distance felt smaller.

Little by little, these small routines have become my anchors. They don’t erase the ache of missing home, but they make it bearable. They remind me that I don’t have to choose between the old me and the new life. Both can exist at the same time.

If you’re reading this as someone in India with an offer letter saved on your phone, wondering whether you should really go through with it, I want to speak to you directly.

You don’t need to feel “ready” in some perfect, fearless way. I wasn’t. I was excited, scared, proud and guilty, all at once. I second-guessed myself even as I wheeled my luggage into the airport. And yet, underneath all of that, there was a quieter voice that said, “Try. This is what you wished for.”

There will be days when you feel lost, out of place, and tired of explaining yourself. There will be mornings where you wake up and wish you could have breakfast at your own dining table at home instead. There will be assignments that make you doubt your abilities and seminars where everyone seems smarter and more confident than you feel.

But there will also be days when you catch yourself walking confidently to a class you once had to search for on a map. Moments when you raise your hand and share an opinion that only you could offer. Evenings when you leave a conversation thinking, “I’m actually part of this now, not just watching from the outside.”

I almost didn’t come.

That version of me — sitting in my room in India, laptop open, fear loud but hope just slightly louder — had no idea how this would turn out. She just took one step, then another, then another. And now, when I look around at this messy, challenging, growing new life, I’m grateful she did.

If you’re standing where I was, maybe you don’t need a guarantee. Maybe you just need a small push — a reminder that it’s okay to be afraid and still move toward the thing that matters to you.

This, right here, matters.