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"It's Like . . . a Confronting Issue": Life-Changing Narratives of Young People

The University of Sydney, Australia

Louise Rowling

The University of Sydney, Australia

Lesley Scanlon

The University of Sydney, Australia

In this article, the authors report on the narrative accounts given in interviews by 27 first-year university students in New South Wales, Australia, regarding their experiences of loss. The students were drawn from four campuses: a large city campus, a smaller urban campus, one outer metropolitan campus, and one rural campus. From participants' accounts, the researchers found that it was important for these students to organize their experience and make sense of it. In making sense, these students imposed meaning on their experiences and thereby constructed and reconstructed stories of loss to make better sense of their experience. The researchers recognized that within the interviews, they were positioned as an audience and that they were part of a reexperiencing of the narrative. In this sense, they were collaborators in the retelling of the narrative of a lived experience.

Key Words: narrative • loss • qualitative research

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