For this semester, I will be researching into Uni students and lifelong relationships, whether that be a friendship or something a little more. What I want to find out is, whether or not students are connecting with their peers on a personal level and are forming lasting friendships. I want to research into how other students met their current Uni friends. Was it in a lecture, sitting in a tutorial or simply fate bringing them together by randomly crossing paths?
A young woman named Rachel is currently blogging her life experiences and she wrote a post about how she didn’t make any close friends attending Uni. Reading her weigh up all the possible solutions as to why this occurred, it begins to make me wonder, why are some people failing to make friends while others seem to find it easy?
Furthering on this point, Year 13, a very well-known organisation amongst most Australian students published a post by Genevieve Miller, who was an Australian Uni student. In this post, similar to the one above, she spoke about by the end of her first year she hadn’t met anyone that she would consider a ‘close friend’. “People will tell you that Uni will be this amazing experience where you’ll meet tones of people who will be there for you till, you’re old and grey.” This point is quite intriguing to me. Should we leave the stigma of University helping students make lifelong friendships behind? Why? This article also helped me to realise that my research topic is timely as the primary research conducted will be on second year and above students.
My idea for this research is, to begin with whether or not students knew people before starting their uni course. This, to me, has such a major effect on a student’s experience and can create such an issue among peers. I created a poll on this question.
The results of the poll interest me and I am very excited to further dive into whether or not knowing people or having friends start Uni with you positively or negatively affects Uni students making lasting connections.
Coming up with this research topic, a thought did come into mind, so much of our content that we need is online, is this affecting whether or not students are personally connecting with each other? In 2020, The Conversation uploaded an article about online lectures and a point was made that University not only teaches students content but it also teaches students how to communicate with each other and work in groups. This article has shown that my research topic is relevant as being online is a huge part of being a student in the 21st Century. The rate of online schooling continues to increase daily, especially through this pandemic that students and the world population are working through right now, proving again that this topic is relevant.
Another article on The Conversation about University campus experience, discusses the life of Australian students and a point made was “Students also indicated they were less engaged with their peers than students in the past have been”. This not only shows the relevance of my research but also affects my research topic greatly. If students are not engaging with their peers, then this is a major issue as to why some students are not creating lifelong friendships and connections.
I believe that my research topic is achievable as I have access to asking relevant students the right questions. These students are all second year and above, who are studying the same subject as me, so therefore this makes my research not only achievable but also relevant. These students have gotten a good feel of what their Uni experience will be like and know what they need to change or keep the same when meeting people.
I believe this topic is worth researching, not only as this is something that interests me, but it will also be important for current and future students to learn about Uni and lifelong relationships. We are constantly being told, “follow each other on twitter”, or “create a poll for your fellow peers”, but this isn’t helping students connect on a deeper level, or maybe it is. That is what I want to find out.
Deakin University, in 2018, wrote about meeting people and making friends and the article states that students must be open minded to meeting people in order to form these friendships, which brings me to another question, were students looking forward to meeting new people or was studying the only thing on their mind?
To sum up this research proposal, I simply want to learn as much as I possibly can about students and lifelong relationships. The overall idea is to find out how they are meeting, what type of connections are they making and what are factors that are influencing the relationships they are making?
Be Kind, R.
immerse into media 