The Traveler|Nikoleta Mancheva
She is a senior at the American University in Bulgaria, studying Journalism and Mass Communication and Political Science, her name is Nikoleta Mancheva. She is sitting on one of the chairs in the Writing Center, explaining the weird feeling of graduating. Nikoleta loves the AUBG environment, which gave her a lot, during the years and says: “I don’t want to graduate because I don’t want to leave that security bubble, where you feel happy, around the people who love you”. But at the same time, she shares that she wants to move on and try new things. She feels excited and nervous about her graduation.
Her near-future facts are already planned. She wants to get a Master’s Degree in the fields of Journalism and Mass Communication but she hasn’t decided yet in which country she wants to study. Nikoleta knows that she wants to develop her skills and maybe live in a country in Western Europe. No matter that she has the dream of studying and living somewhere in Europe, before committing a Master’s Degree, she wants to stay here in Bulgaria and work because the Master’s programs are really expensive and she needs time to consider what she wants to study.
She may still haven’t decided where she wants to study but Nikoleta has a favorite country. It is Austria and she says: “I love Austria. Vienna is one of my favorite cities, it’s a great combination of nice culture and good education and working environment.” Her opinion about people there is that they are warm and welcoming.
An experience, even closer than the Master’s Degree, that she has planned is going to the United States, on a work and travel program. It is going to be her fourth summer in Nantucket, Massachusetts. She loves traveling in the United States, she has been to Boston, New York, Los Angeles. San Francisco, San Diego, Las Vegas, The Canyons and Hawaii. She shares that she loves traveling and experiencing new things in the USA because American culture is pretty different from that in Europe and as a curious person, who loves learning something new every day. But she pictures herself living and studying in Europe.
About her AUBG life, she shares: “It has been a great adventure in terms of clubs and friendships.” In her first year, she joined AUBG Daily, then she joined the Broadway Performance Club as a makeup artist and an organizer. In her third year, she was chosen to be a producer of the club and this year she is producing the new musical. It is not easy to manage so many people, they start thinking about the new musical in the summer, then there are auditions in September. After that, they gather the new team and start working from the beginning of October until the premiere of the musical, which is at the end of March. It is very challenging, to lead 40 people and the whole project. She says:” It is challenging but I am teaching myself to be a better leader by that and people appreciate the effort when you do everything with passion”.
When she talks about the past years at the AUBG she says: “One of the biggest influences throughout my AUBG life was the group of friends I met at the orientation week”. They were like fifteen people and everybody was telling them that they are never going to stay friends. Nikoleta explains that the funny thing is that they are still friends until this day. She shares:” It is funny because all of us are in different clubs and we still manage to keep our friendship”. She traveled with her roommate to the States, Nikoleta says that they are very close and have a great friendship.
About coming to Blagoevgrad in the very beginning, 4 years ago, Nikoleta has some not so happy memories. She was crying in the car on the way to Blagoevgrad, her friends were in her hometown and she was worried of not finding any friends here:” It is the mentality, if you set yourself that you are going to hate a certain place, you will”. She is happy because not matter that she was feeling so sad at that time, she found great friends, who accepted her from the beginning.
Some of her friends share that she is an organized person, who always has a plan. She is such a good and reliable friend, it is always so nice to be around her because she is very funny and you can talk to her about everything.
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Velislava Stoitsova is a student at the AUBG. She studies Political Science and Journalism and Mass Comunication.
