Why am I here? A self-study of an international art education student lost in transition

This article is an arts-based inquiry into the often overlooked stories of international graduate students (IGSs) in art education. In this case, I draw on my experiences as a Korean graduate student in Canada, rendered through visuals and text. As part of my ongoing reflective process, I approached this project through life writing and drawing as a means to articulate my understandings of the moments within my first year in the programme. The questions that guided my research include the following: What kind of academic adaptation issues do IGSs experience? Does a personal story provide useful insight into the phenomena of the academic adaptation process? And how do visual narratives as arts-based educational research (ABER) provide a rendering of the experience of an IGS? With this intent, this article examines diverse ways that help to broaden and deepen the discourses of international students in educational studies.