In their own words: American student narratives of Challenges and Struggles while studying abroad

This thesis explores the lived experience of American students studying abroad in the UK and is interested in understanding a range of challenges and struggles students face while abroad. One unique challenge for participants was experiencing the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, which resulted in all participants returning to the US prematurely to continue their studies virtually. Whilst there are numerous studies on students studying abroad, most of these studies seek knowledge via surveys, questionnaires, or semi-structured interviews. This study was an independent doctoral study that sought rich biographic narrative data using a psycho-social interview design with six participants two months after their semester had ended. A hybrid of Wengraf's (2001) Biographic Narrative Interpretive Method (BNIM) was used to capture participants' lived experiences in their own words. Systemic and Psychoanalytic theory was used to observe, contextualise and analyse data. The findings suggest participants' struggles are, at times, displaced by the positive dominant abroad narrative, which unintentionally leaves little space for difficulties to be acknowledged and shared openly. However, when participant narratives emerged they were conceptualised as surface or deeper narratives. The surface narratives contained easier-to-describe difficulties related to differences between the US and UK educational systems. Deeper narratives contained difficulties related to emotional, psychological, and biographical narratives intersected by internalised cultural, social, and societal demands. Findings show that participants used defence mechanisms to protect themselves against the anxiety of re-telling stories about their difficult experiences. Rather than isolated experiences, the findings show these participants experienced several intersections of personal, social, familial, academic, cultural, and peer group difficulties, which impacted their study abroad experiences.