Understanding Resilience: Recognizing the Impacts of Covid-19 on International Students in Georgia

Many studies have shown how the COVID-19 pandemic impacts individuals and students. However, there is a dearth of research on the influence of the pandemic on international students in Georgia and their coping mechanisms. A qualitative phenomenological study is used to recognize the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on international students in Georgia and explore their coping mechanisms and resilience. Five international students participated in the semi-structured in-depth interview that revealed how some international students cope amid stressful experiences from individual traits and external support. Preliminary findings include (I) problems encountered during the COVID-19 pandemic; a) academic problems and (b) psychological stress and (ii) international students’ coping mechanisms; (a) intrinsic factors influencing resilience, (b) social factors influencing resilience. Practices to support international students and implications for research are discussed. Providing emotional support that tackles the culturally-specific needs of international students and also go beyond creating social events for international students to taking time to learn about their culture and coping strategies to make policies and makes changes that allow for true inclusion. For this study, a few limitations exist. First, participants spoke particularly about their experiences at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. As an exploratory study, I recommend further longitudinal studies to take into consideration changes that might happen whilst dealing with the pandemic. Also, this study does not examine racial discriminatory experiences even though participants spoke about them. The focus was mainly on understanding their resiliency. In addition, this study only had one undergraduate participant, further studies could explore the phenomenon between being an undergraduate student as opposed to being a graduate student as differences could be retrieved