Asavari Dhodapkar

We are delighted to welcome Asavari to the podcast! Asavari is the University of Nottingham Year 2 lead in Physiotherapy. She is also a Physiotherapist with a specialist interest in Neurological rehabilitation. 
Asavari talks about her career so far, and what its like to be a student who has had to study abroad when she left home to come to study in the UK.  Asavari gives some really key insights to these experiences and talks about the support structures we have at the University to help students settle in. This is a great episode and one you don't want to miss!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

So welcome back to It's Not Just Physio with me, James Coghlan. These episodes are specifically designed for our wonderful new student starters to get to know some of our staff and get to know some of our resources available. for your support to make the university experience as enjoyable as possible. And I'm delighted to be joined by Asavri, who is with me today. Good morning, Asavri.

SPEAKER_00: 0:35

Morning. How are you? I'm good, thank you. Yes, I'm great. I'm quite excited. A little nervous, but excited.

SPEAKER_01: 0:44

I'm sure you'll be absolutely great in this episode. We've got a great episode lined up here. So, Asavari, why don't you introduce yourself to our listeners? Tell us who you are and what you do and a little bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_00: 0:56

Yeah, absolutely. So, hi, everybody. I'm Asavari Dorapkar. I am a teaching associate at the University of Nottingham. I mainly teach the neuro-e subjects. So when you have a neuro-e week, you'll probably see me around. I'm also involved with placement support. So I'm the lead for physio placements. So any kind of placement related queries, stuff about allocations, support, et cetera. I am your go-to person, hopefully. The other bits of stuff that I do at the university are I'm the year two lead. So hopefully when you move on to next year, you'll be able to you'll have a lot more contact with me because I teach on a lot of the practical modules in year two. Yeah, apart from that, I'm from India. I'm from Mumbai. I moved to the UK about three years ago now in 2021 to do my master's. And then I got a job at the university here. So yeah, that's a little bit about myself.

SPEAKER_01: 2:07

Fantastic. And I think within that impressive list of responsibilities and things you do within the school, Asabri's also a module lead in year two for the module transforming practice. So loads of experiences to bring to the table now what this episode is about in particular today is to discuss what it might be like for students who are studying abroad for themselves so they're coming over to the uk to study and we know on our course we have quite a lot of international students But what we're going to be looking to do today is to get Asavri's experience of that herself and to go through some of the challenges and maybe some of the feelings that she experienced from that process and what, as the university, we can do to help support students in that particular position. So, Asavri, I don't know if you want to take us away with how that all came about for yourself.

SPEAKER_00: 3:15

Yep. Absolutely. So I think it's important to start at the beginning with kind of why I chose to come to the UK. So I'm a physiotherapist by background and I did my training in India in one of the colleges there. I worked for a year and then the pandemic hit. So I was at home working from home doing a bit of tele-rehab and I taught at an NGO at the time. which I found to be a very fulfilling experience. Um, and then I kind of moved to, I'd always had this notion that, uh, in India, there's this trend that, uh, yeah, if you're a physiotherapist, you're obviously going to go abroad for master's service. It was kind of an obvious thing. It's, it's more of an obvious step that a lot of people, uh, tend to take in India. Um, and the more degrees you have, uh, my culture really respects the degrees on your wall. Um, which is which is i think very different from what it is here but anyway so um the plan was always to do a master's and once the pandemic kind of eased out in 2021 i decided to do a master's in the uk because it was i think the primary reason for it was it was close to home i wanted to go out but still kind of be close enough so that i can go home if there's an emergency or if my parents need me etc um and so me and my best friend we sat down made a list of uh all the colleges really. We really geeked out on it. We have like Excel sheets and spreadsheets of each university in the UK, which offers a master's program and why we chose or not chose to go there, etc. So it was a very nerdy process. But yeah, eventually we both chose to go to Cardiff and kind of moved there in September 2021. And yeah, I think there were various reasons why we kind of chose the program. One of the primary ones were that it had a good neuro and an MSK program which both of us kind of wanted to do because she wanted to do MSK, I wanted to do neuro and we were looking for a university which kind of offered both so that we could stick together. So we moved to Cardiff in the September of 2021. The pandemic was still kind of going on so we had to kind of quarantine at home and stuff. It was quite hard because we didn't really know a lot of people we knew one other person who had gone to Cardiff a few months before us so kind of only just knew her and it was I think from my experience of coming to the UK I think the things that really changed for me were the little things the little cultural things which you kind of take for granted in your home country like when my friend and I moved to a house so we stayed at a student accommodation for about a year which was the easiest like I was staying at a hotel your rent was already paid for and like it was coming from my student loans you had to go to uni etc and that was easy but then eventually we decided we wanted to move out and kind of stay on our own so we found a house which was again another process in itself trying to rent a place etc where trying to find a UK guarantor and stuff where because we were international students they wanted us to have someone who was local saying that oh yeah these guys are not going to take the house and run away with all the money so we wanted so those are the kind of little things that started to kind of get to us which were which in India if you want to rent a house you don't really need a guarantor you just need to find a house and that's it the process of finding a house is also very different and And then we started paying our own bills and we couldn't understand the electricity bill at all. It was just it was so hard. I don't know what it was about the electricity bill. This whole concept of paying a similar amount throughout the year and rather than paying what you have kind of used was just so new and so unnecessary. I still don't get it. I still think if you just pay what you are using that makes more sense to my Indian brain but apparently this is yeah anyway so you're

SPEAKER_01: 7:54

not alone with that it's this estimated use and they try and give you an estimation over a year and they make it out but what the estimation was it will save you money but I think overall you end up feeling like you're overpaying I'm with you it really isn't clear I've got that same problem with it

SPEAKER_00: 8:15

No, I agree. I think I still have the same problem. So I think one of the things that we had done to help, which really, really helped us in that period when both of us were completely clueless, and we didn't know the little things, like we didn't know about, we didn't get a water bill for like three months. And we were like, is Welsh water just giving us free water? It was just bizarre. We didn't get it at all. So one of the things that really helped was that we both used to work at a person's place who she was disabled and we both used to work there as her support workers. And she was a really nice lady. She was really helpful and kind to us. And we would ask her all of our questions with regards to how do you pay the water bill? How is the electricity thing working in this country? what do you do for Wi-Fi what is council tax why do we need to give it etc so she was mainly like our Google because she'd lived in Cardiff all her life and she was older she was about she's about 40 years old now and I think I think one of the things that I would strongly advise anyone who wants to come to the UK and figure out these little things is to kind of make a friend make a local friend and because it's it's one of those things where they will be able to input a lot of this information for you rather than finding it on google because it's all very confusing and very similar stuff written on google you'll just like you get more confused it's easier to just ask someone who's local and which is what i continue to do today it's one of the major kind of lessons that i've learned from that experience in cardiff that just asking someone who's done it already who's been in the country for either born here or has lived here long enough, it's the easiest way to kind of get information. So I think James can vouch for this, that I ask about rent and car and how to buy a house and stuff. So yeah, all the office kind of knows about my daily life dramas. Trying to figure, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 10:37

Well, I think you've made a really good suggestion. Sometimes locally,

SPEAKER_03: 10:45

you

SPEAKER_01: 10:45

know you might find someone who who's been in the area so funnily enough I've actually got to ask my neighbour about something about I've been living in this area about the council tax you just reminded me but I think it's a really good suggestion it's a great suggestion in terms of getting to know people within your area but one thing I would say is that the the student union at the University of Nottingham they have loads of support for this type of thing so again if anyone this listening to this is struggling with, and as Asaf has rightly mentioned, sometimes quite a confusing set of things. And often for students in an undergraduate course, we'll often live in halls of residence typically in the first year

SPEAKER_02: 11:30

and

SPEAKER_01: 11:31

move into their sort of combination of friends in the second and third year. This thing might be even more relevant in those bits. But again, this applies to anyone who might be living in private housing in the first year as well. as well. But yeah, going through these things, I can imagine this was all quite confusing and complex and difficult. And did you feel you managed to get on top of those things relatively quickly once you knew what to do? Or was that still quite challenging in its own way?

SPEAKER_00: 12:03

Yeah, so I'm a really organized person. And the reason why you need to know that is because I already had looked into all of this before I came here. So I already kind of knew that the electricity thing was a little different, that I knew that if you were going to rent a house, this is kind of how much it was going to cost and et cetera, et cetera. So I kind of knew a lot of it already cognitively and in a sense that I Googled all of it. And it was available on the university website, like it is available on the University of Nottingham website as well, where there's an international student support page where you can find all of the information that you kind of need before you can before you come to knots and stuff so those are the kind of things that I'd read similar things for Cardiff as well they had the same kind of information on their uni pages etc and eventually I think it got easier but I think nothing really prepares you for the cultural shock and these little things are the ones that get to you it's not it's not about being in a new environment for me at least it wasn't about looking at people who were very different from what I look like and things like that there it wasn't about those things it wasn't about that it was more about these bits of logistics which really frustrate me like I'm trying to buy a car now and it's just a little bits of it's not like buying clothes of going to a rest going to a store and getting your piece of clothing it's There are so many bits and bobs to it, which is kind of what you kind of need to figure out. So I think it's a constant learning curve. And if you're an international student here, like with everything, if you move to a new environment, it's going to be a learning curve. But it's an exciting learning curve. It's going to be something that you are going to get so much out of. You're enriching your life experience. And I think it's really, really important to do that. It widens and broadens your your horizons in ways that you would not possibly have imagined at all. It's very different to stay in the comfort of your own country and knowing everything and etc. And there's nothing wrong with that. But if you do kind of take the leap of moving out somewhere, even within your country, if you move cities, there's quite a lot of change that you kind of have to go through. Like when I moved from Cardiff to Nottingham, there was still quite a lot of learning to be done Because I'd already, the one and a half year that I spent in Cardiff, I'd learned the bus routes, I knew the way, I would walk everywhere. Yeah, it was all very familiar. But when I came to Nottingham, it's all again, very, very new. And I've been here for a year. So it's now gotten much better. But yeah, it gets better with time. I think that's one of the other thing that you've got to give yourself some time to settle in. There's no point in trying to rush yourself and trying to figure everything out and get frustrated over it. Give yourself some time. Find resources and sources of support. Like the Student Union is a great source of support. There's an international cell in there where you can ask all your questions, ask them what to do, what are the kind of things that are needed, etc. And especially for undergraduate students who are so much younger than I was. So I moved when I was, I think, 23, 24 years old. Whereas I realized that undergrads would be much younger than I am typically, which is again, you're younger, but that also means that you're less rigid. So you have kind of more ability to be flexible. So while age is a factor, but you kind of need to factor that in that you might be more receptive to stuff and to new experiences and so on. So I think you make the most of it, make the most of your experience here and this whole journey that you're going to be on, hopefully.

SPEAKER_01: 16:22

Well, thank you for sharing these experiences. And from what I've understood from you saying is that whilst it can be quite new and scary and change can often be like that, there's also embracing the fact that I like what you said about not perhaps being too rigid in things, being able to be open to new experiences. which is a positive as well. But I can imagine, you know, being an international student, as you did, as I really know, you've left your home, your family, friends, which, you know, can always, you know, be challenging and can be quite upsetting. How did you find that process for yourself and how did you find you managed that?

SPEAKER_00: 17:20

I think... So for me, it was quite different. I had moved out of home for my undergrad. So I'd already done the bit about missing home thing and getting over that in the four and a half years that I spent away from home in college. So it wasn't that hard. Yes, it was different. It was different this time, but I had the added advantage of having my best friend from undergrad with me. so it we were enough for each other I think it was it was we were yeah we were more than enough for each other I did miss my family and stuff in the start but I got used to it very quickly because by the time I was already used to living away from home and living away from them so it just felt like an extension of my undergraduate days where I was also living away with again that same person who who had come all the way to Cardiff with me as well so it just felt like an extension of our undergrad days we we in the first few months we kind of yeah just did all the things that we used to do when we were back home but then eventually we branched out made new friends etc but for a little while it was just the two of us and it wasn't so bad it was it was quite good so I think but there are obviously other sources of support that you could potentially access or I understand that for people who would be moving on for the undergraduate program, it would be the first time they're probably moving away from home. And that can be quite challenging. And I think looking at accessing support from, again, student services, if there's something a little more in-depth that you want support for or something more apart from the homesickness, then think about well-being services. services within the university i think they're they're really good and i've recommended them to a lot of my personal duties as well um then another another way that you can access support is your personal tutor um so personal tutors are people at the university who will um one academic who will be well in charge of pastoral support for you so um make use of of that opportunity uh get in touch with them get to know them a little bit and if you're one of my personal duties your more than welcome to come talk to me anytime I don't yeah I've been told that I don't look like an academic that I look like a student so I'm a little more approachable I suppose hopefully but yes if use the personal tutors as source of support use any other academic who you think you're getting along with you have a little bit of a rapport go and speak to them I think there's a lot of strength in trying to look for sources of support for yourself there is I think you constantly need to be in a problem solving kind of a mentality rather than suffering by yourself because there's no one who's going to kind of come and save you it's important to go out there put yourself out there and look for support I think the other thing that people could potentially try out if you're kind of feeling lonely is joining societies joining there are various societies within the university and there is I think something for everybody if you're into sport there's a lot of sport stuff if you're into the performing arts etc there's quite a lot of that etc and so on I know this because I was looking at so I'm a classical dancer from India and I was looking at Indian classical dance and there was a society for that as well so that's quite niche and you still kind of have something for it so So yeah, I think you'd find like-minded people. It's something to do. It's an activity to do in the days when you need a little slow or in the days when you still haven't made friends. It's a great way of making friends is joining societies and especially friends who are from different parts of the world rather than kind of sticking to the group of people that you came with or you know and so on, even though I'm quite guilty of doing that.

SPEAKER_01: 21:55

Well, no, I mean, one of the reasons I love doing these pods is finding more things out about people. I didn't know that about your dancing. So that's going to be, I'm going to be, that'd be great to see in time. Sorry, but you're absolutely right. And I think, you know, that's within university, hopefully students are aware we have this, we call this welcome week or freshers week, as it's often called, where students, I mean, the reality is most students, I think, go to university. And if you don't know anyone, you like to think, I'm not going to meet anyone and no one's going to want to be my friend. And all I would say, because I get your opinion on it, it couldn't be further from that because everyone wants to make friends with everyone. So it's a really good opportunity. You don't have to try very hard to make friends. I think you'll naturally, people are naturally going to want to come together. One of my absolute best friends I met on the course within my first day and it's a number of people I've spoken to have found that made friends for life so I think it's always about trying to get I like what you said about you've got to get yourself out there a little bit and one thing I would say is with those You know, things like the dancing and having that sort of outlets from the course, because study can be quite heavy. It's great to hear you've done that. And we've seen a lot of our students pursue things, sports, music, dancing. The university offers hundreds of different things to do, which can be a really nice thing to consider to balance your studies. But as you say about societies, boom. We have the there's a podcast about this in the pack, but Supra, as it's called, is the is the physio society. I gather as soon as you join, you are technically a member of it. So students listening to this and there's no fee, by the way. So, you know, you know that already that's a family kind of feel to get involved in as well. which is, which is absolutely, absolutely great and worth, worth getting onto, uh, to, you know, being a part of what they offer as well for socials and stuff. Um, but you know, again, this, you mentioned about this, I think this is an important area is, is about resilience. I think, um, it's good for our students to be aware of that. Yes, you're absolutely right. They're coming into a very new environment. Um, That could be, say, geographically, but also in terms of university, what it has to offer. The style of learning and the style of teaching is going to be very different to what you've typically been doing to this point, isn't it? And the point of that is to build... resilience because as physiotherapists you need to be resilient you're going to have to be resilient and things are not always going to be um given to you and and you've got to go out and search and make connections um what do you make of that asavari would you would you agree with that that statement from your own experiences

SPEAKER_00: 25:12

yes absolutely i think it's it's so important to be resilient not just because you're kind of moving to a new country and the little things will get to you and you kind of have to have that will to persevere and when you're in a new country you can't really stay away from the culture there it's important that you kind of imbibe that a little bit like I'm in no shape or form trying to say that you need to go to pubs and do whatever but I did try it for the first few months I was here because I was like okay what is a pub quiz what are these football matches about because I was in Cardiff they were crazy about rugby and a few times I didn't know that there was a rugby match that was going to happen and it was and I saw all of these people dressed in all these these colors going towards it it was just so confusing but it it was it was life it was very exuberant it was it was their culture and I think I think it was I remember I stood in the middle of the street and just tried to soak everything in in terms of what what was happening what are what are these people trying to do I actually asked somebody I stopped someone and said what is happening and they looked at me like I was absolutely stupid like I was living under a rock and they said of course there's the seven the whatever the five nations seven nations thing that rugby is on about that was happening and I'm like oh my god so it's important to kind of integrate yourself into the culture a little bit and that I think that really builds in with your resilience and I think the other things with regards to the academics side of things. I come from a very different education system. The way I was taught in undergraduate was very different from what I learned in master's, which meant that this whole process of doing a master's was very, very new to me. But one is, I think you've got to be a little flexible. You've got to be open-minded. If you come in with a mindset that your education system, the one that you've learned in, is going to be very similar to what it is here, it's not. It's absolutely different. So you've got to be flexible you've got to do your homework so look at like i i knew already what i was getting myself into which is why i was less surprised when it actually happened uh it's more independent it's not a lot of spoon feeding like it was in india it's not a lot of uh saying these are the 10 things that you've got to do and these are the 100 exams that you give but it's more of this is one essay you can use 100 books it depends on you go to the library find yourself etc so that that feels very wishy-washy to uh my Indian brain, but it was exactly how my master's was. But I knew about it before I came in. So I think preparing, preparing, preparing would be my key thing where I had prepared for it. I knew that it was going to be so different. I didn't know how I would cope with it, but I knew that it's going to be different, which means that I was already mentally preparing that, okay, I need to figure it out somehow. The other thing that kind of helped with academic studies is I'd actually accessed some of these english language courses um so in my entire schooling has been in primarily english language i probably speak english much better than um any other indian vernacular languages at the moment um but i didn't know how to write in academic english because i never had the uh i didn't need to till now which meant that i needed to learn how to do it and at university even at an undergrad level you need to kind of learn how to do how to write in academic uh English and it's quite different from from spoken so that's again adding one caveat one extra layer of complexity to your kind of speaking and and writing skills so I'd access the English language support thing I think there are there are two bits to it I think there's one which happens which runs through your course so there are a few sessions that I had done where this English teacher was actually telling us this is how you write it this is how you paraphrase this is how you reflect and this is kind of how you show criticality etc and I find myself going back to those resources several times over the years whenever I have to write an essay even today when I have to write an essay I go back to that one document that I want to look at which I think is very very helpful for me so I know that there are similar things at the university here where there are things for English language support I think you can do a few pre-course things as well for English language support. So come a few weeks earlier to your course and do that if you want a little more support with that, etc. So I think accessing these things would really help with your academic journey. And even if you're an English speaker, even if you're a native English speaker, I think just academic skills is a good source of support to look at that day. I think they're happy to read through a pointers about this is how it sounds, this is how you could potentially improve it, etc. And I had accessed those when I was at uni for my master's, where I'd sent across a piece of work to somebody and they had actually reviewed a bit of a few of my paragraphs for me, which was really helpful, because when you write it, you think you are doing a fabulous job. Or if you're making chat GPT right, you think chat GPT is doing a brilliant job. But honestly, you need someone to proofread your work, you need someone to fact check it, not fact check per se but more of proofreading more of sound checking it seeing if it sounds right if it's actually in the style that people expect of you at university so I think it's really important to access those sources of support that you have and prepare yourself for accessing all of that so already when you're back if you're still back in your country you can still access all of this on the internet it's all freely available on the university website and the web pages and there are a lot of blogs there are a lot of youtube channels about people who have come all the way here who are saying very similar things to what i'm saying i'd watched a lot of them honestly because i was just i i wanted to be hyper prepared about it so um if you are if you are a very organized person if you like to be prepared i would recommend just accessing everything all information that you can before you start the course so that you don't have many surprises. There will still be a steep learning curve, but that steep learning curve, you're going to come out of it so much better and so much wiser with a much more enriched experience of life at such a young age.

SPEAKER_01: 32:05

That's really so much great information there. Thank you for sharing that. And I think, yeah, as I say, these resources that are available through the academic support services at the university which a student can self-refer to um which is which is great um and can give you so many things and as you say he's given you that foundation for um your studies and your few and you know you know your postgrad studies and and also you're doing even more study at the moment um and as you say those kind of skills that you're now you're still using today formed from university which is which is absolutely fantastic so what i'm understanding is is those that's it's really that you've got to push a little bit out of the comfort zone, really embrace what the university has to offer. Don't be afraid to engage with people on the course and societies. Of course, your personal tutor is there for support if you need it, of course. But it's interesting you said about embracing some of the culture. And for those who are not familiar with Nottingham in itself, I feel like I've got maybe a few little bits out on the radar. So Nottingham has two main football teams. You've got Nottingham Forest, who were European champions back in 79 and 1980. They're the only English teams who ever won sort of back-to-back Champions Leagues. believe it or not. So a very famous football team of Brian Clough, their previous manager. But also they've got their neighbours, Notts County. And now Notts County are also a very famous club because as the story goes, Juventus, which is arguably the biggest team in Italy, actually got their black and white stripes on their kit from Notts County. So the way it goes is Notts County apparently gave Juventus an old set of shirts because Juventus was starting Nottingham's a new club, it didn't have any kits. So you see this nice famous transcendence across there. Two fantastic football teams and the geography is amazing. They're about, well, maybe a little bit more than this, but they're about 100 yards away from each other. So if you're going to come to Nottingham, definitely get involved in that. But Nottingham's also really big on cricket. So down at Trent Bridge, very passionate cricket city, fantastic sport in itself. so all different formats of the game definitely worth a look for Nottingham was also quite famous for its ice hockey they have quite a strong ice hockey following as well at the arena they do have rugby there is a rugby union as well but probably not as big as the things we've just mentioned and there's probably some other stuff as well but Nottingham also boasts it has the oldest pub in the world arguably called Yield Trip of Jerusalem now there is always debate on whether it is or not but definitely Definitely worth a look at. And I'm with you, Asabri. I'm not a big drinker either, but even just to go down and see it, it's definitely worth it. Via the Nottingham Castle as well. So not many cities can boast a castle in its realms, but that's another part of it as well. Nottingham's also got a fantastic music scene. And also outside of London, Nottingham has also got the most independent shops and restaurants outside of London, basically. So very big on its independent chains, which makes it very nice to walk through. So So lots of great coffee shops and places to eat. In terms of music, Rock City is quite iconic in a real, so many great bands have played there in the past. But other places like the Bodega, Rescue Rooms, Billy Bootleggers, there's loads of places around Nottingham. So if you like music, definitely worth checking it out as well. And maybe showing my age a little bit, I don't know if this would really interest a lot of students, but Nottingham is also, as I say, it's based in what we call the Midlands. So it is sort of the middle of the country, right bang on what we call the peak district and the peak district is some of the most beautiful countryside in the uk um and from being in manchester the peak lies between manchester and nottingham so i can testify fantastic if you're into nature if you're into getting outside and doing activity walking cycling camping peak district is a fantastic place on your doorstep to to get you to know and places like bakewell is also very famous very famous for its bakewell time heart but also the bake or sponge it's all about cakes it's all pretty good as well but as I say being in the Midlands it's a great access point around the country so you're not it's easy to get up to the north some great cities up there, obviously, like Manchester and Leeds, but you're not far from going to Liverpool and not far from going to Scotland as well, but also you're not far from London as well. It's about an hour and a half on the train down to London. As you say, it's a train that goes from Nottingham to Cardiff in itself, and Cardiff and Wales is a fantastic country to check out as well. So little tips and tricks on there. I'm sure there's many more. And I will probably, I won't be forgiven if I don't mention this as well. Nottingham is also the home of the famous English novelist D.H. Lawrence. So again, any of you into your sort of novels and poetry and playwriting, D.H. Lawrence is a very famous writer and this is the birthplace of them. So I don't know, sorry, I'm going on about, I know Nottingham, like the back of my hand, I know it pretty well. But is there anything that you've come across since you've been here which you've gone, oh yeah, that's pretty cool or that's pretty unique? I'm putting you on the spot here. but just to know what you found.

SPEAKER_00: 37:53

I think I really like the idea of having a castle in the city because I had a castle when I was in Cardiff. So I feel like now after this, I can only move to places where there's a castle. So on my first, when I came to interview for this job, I remember very clearly where my boyfriend and I went around the city after the interview. And we were quite amazed by how many uphills there are to walk firstly in the city. center and and it's nice to have that up and down kind of it has a very hill station you feel about the fact that it's it's not level ground and then we also went to the castle and we went to a few eating places around here and stuff like that so there's quite a lot of that there are actually really good restaurants there are good Indian restaurants and good like more Asian East Asian restaurants as well so it's not just it's big enough to have that I suppose and nowadays you'd find in the UK there's like even the smallest places I've seen that there is some Indian restaurant there's some Indian takeout kind of a thing so it's yeah I think from a perspective of eating out and going out if you want to eat something which is very similar to kind of your culture and stuff you would hopefully find those places in Nottingham because it's big enough to have have all of those and I'm absolutely with you on the Peak District one I've gone to so I don't have a car yet which means that I travel by public transport which is the bane of my existence but there's a place called Hope in the Peak District where you can which you can very easily access by train from Nottingham and then there's like a there's a trek there so you can hike up to these peaks called Mam Torb or whatever and then there's like a circle there and stuff like that so you can you can do a lot of things even even when you're uh kind of a student and on a budget and so on and um there's quite a lot to do in nottingham i would recommend going to wallerton hall um and uh wallerton park wallerton halls actually uh where i think one of the batmans was shot isn't it where dark night rises wayne

SPEAKER_01: 40:19

manor absolutely yeah yeah yeah

SPEAKER_00: 40:22

so that's that's again another piece of trivia and the funny thing is when we uh the first kind of weekend here my boyfriend and I ran to Wollaton Park from where I stay which was like I think an hour of running and um and we went up to the to Wollaton Hall and uh I have a picture beside Wollaton Hall because he was like just stand for a picture so I did and um later on when we left from there we realized that it it's where it it was actually Wayne Manor and where Dark Knight Rider were shot, etc. And he was so upset that he didn't get a picture because he is absolutely crazy about Batman. And I have a picture and I don't care for it at all. So it's a really good place to go around. There are quite a lot of deer and stuff in the park as well. And it's very close to uni from the David Ross site. So it's definitely something that you should check out if you like going for a little run or walk in the park. And parks are another big thing about the uk i think that's one of the things that i really like about this country the the bits about the little piece of nature that they've preserved within their cities it's quite cool

SPEAKER_01: 41:33

and and actually that brings on nicely as another way to meet people and to do something is is the is the park run circuit so for those of you don't know um but i think park run goes on all over the all over the world now anyway but with within um nottingham the wallerton park run is very popular it's i think it's been voted as one of the most beautiful in the uk um but you have absolutely right loads of um opportunity to go for for those of you not familiar with park run it's it's free to go you can turn up i think it's nine o'clock on saturday on saturday most parks across the country and and there's usually a really lovely bunch of people who end up just running walking walk running five kilometers walking some take it I don't know if you've seen it I've certainly witnessed the ultra competitive runners who will try and break the 18 minute mark and they sort of go off at a fair pace but for most of us it's usually a nice way to get out have a nice run meet some people and go for a coffee afterwards I don't know if you've done many rounds here since you've been here

SPEAKER_00: 42:48

yeah no I haven't been on a park run since I've come here because I don't know it's just something about going on a Saturday I just don't end up doing it but I've been meaning to do it and I think it's a really nice way of meeting people but there's also the Robin Hood marathon the half marathon which happens in Nottingham which happens at the end of September which I'm hoping to run this year but that's again all of these I think I've found that using physical activity or sport as a way to meet people and connect with people is a lovely lovely opportunity to kind of play a game with somebody and then you kind of yeah it's one of those things where where you become friends very quickly rather than having an awkward conversation in a cafe or an event or trying to network and stuff. Sport or physical activities is a very easy way of making friends and doing something together, which is quite exciting for everybody.

SPEAKER_01: 43:48

So look, unfortunately, we're running out of time, but I think it's been a fantastic discussion with you. Thank you so much for sharing your experiences and talking through all the many options that our students have to make the most of their time here, because we obviously want that to be as enjoyable and fruitful for them. I think what I often ask most of the people I speak to on these formats at the end is whether there's any last bit of advice you would give to anyone maybe coming. And it might just be some, it could be some student related advice. It might be just some general life advice. It might be anything that you hold true to yourself. And I'm putting you on the spot here, but I don't know if there's anything you wish to share because there's often quite a nice way to finish the episode.

SPEAKER_00: 44:43

So there's something that I have recently kind of started doing, and it's to do with something with a course that I did over the weekend, last weekend, and where they talked about the fact that happiness is a choice, is... It's a conscious choice that you've got to make every day, every minute, every second. So it is in your hands, your thoughts, emotions, etc. are in your hands. capacity to alter and why not alter them in a way that you are going to feel happy, blissful, peaceful all the time. And you might have observed that when you're happier, your thinking ability and your ability to cognitively do a task gets so much easier, gets so much better. So if you're going to, at university especially, when you have so many cognitive tasks that you've got to do with regards to learning, learning new things and doing assignments and whatnot even socializing to a large extent is a cognitive task where you've got to think about how you're going to talk to these people etc so when you have so many of these processing kind of tasks to do why not do it on the foundation of being happy of being blissful and making the choice every day I think it's we tend to kind of forget it and and And it's very easy to get caught up with things and life and uni life is very hectic. It's all new, exciting, which is great. But at the same time, it can be quite challenging for some people. So it's important to kind of remind yourself to be happy and to try to implement that conscious effort into your own happiness every day.

SPEAKER_01: 46:44

No, I love that. I think that's a really powerful message. And actually echoing on that, I've read something where it was, you know, a happy person is someone that doesn't have problems in their life. it's a happy person is how they choose to face those problems and i think that sometimes can be a misconception that you can only be happy if there's no no problems happening and the reality is we're all going to face problems um but as you say it's that learning of how you can address those things each day and whether you can start to choose on how you approach that. And you're absolutely right. That takes work. That doesn't just happen. It's a practice, isn't it? It's a skill to train oneself to look at things and choose to be happy. But you're right, you can choose that. And to echo what you said, I read something recently where it was about choosing your hard, which meant in the sense of life is hard in whatever you do. So, for example, being at university is hard, but also not being at university is hard. Studying is hard, but also... working full-time is hard so we're all going to experience doing something difficult and and and you know being up another thing we talked about running and fitness keeping fit is hard not being fit is hard so the reality in life is is always going to be that but I love what you've just said about is how you then approach that um and doing that by choosing to be happy trying to choose to see the right side of things or the positive side of things rewires us doesn't it to become a natural fact you often find a lot of things develop as a result of that right

SPEAKER_00: 48:47

yes yeah absolutely I think the more blissful peaceful you are on the inside the better outcomes for you all over are going to happen so not just from a perspective of getting good marks in your exams or making more friends etc but just if in life is just so much better when you are at that stable level of being happy and blissful. And it is quite a... interesting concept to think about, but it's quite hard to implement, like you've just said. But I think it's something that you should look at, start to think about when you're that young so that you don't start to form these ideologies and these complexes before you get too stuck in. Before that, if you take a step back and choose to be happy, choose to inculcate good habits and soak it all in. I think with international students, I think the other thing would be just to soak all of it in you're here to learn you're here to learn not just from the course you will learn quite a lot from the course we'll make sure of that but about about a new country about the culture about the people here and their various sports their quirks their pub quizzes and so on it's it's just an experience it is it's going to enrich your life and enrich and broaden your horizons like I said earlier it's yeah soak it in

SPEAKER_01: 50:20

fantastic sorry it's been a pleasure and we'll speak again soon

SPEAKER_00: 50:26

thank you

SPEAKER_02: 50:29

you