Essex Love Stories: Iglika and Alex

Iglika Nikolova-Stoupak (BA Film Studies and Literature, 2011; MA Literature, 2012) and Alex Stoupak (BSc Business Management, 2011; MSc International Management, 2012).

I met my now husband, Alex Stoupak, in the autumn of 2007; that is to say, a couple of weeks after arriving in Essex to start my undergraduate studies.

People often ask if we were studying the same subject, going to the same club, etc. No, he literally saw me one morning in front of the campus shop on square 4 and asked me if I wanted to get a cup of coffee with him. We realised that we drank our coffee the same way and loved it with the same intensity.

As we walked to town to see a film together that very same day, we discovered a number of other similarities. We spent a year fluctuating between being together and not really being together, but we were best friends during all this time.

In 2009, while still in Essex, we got married and had a baby boy. We stayed in Essex for a while, where we also did our postgraduate studies. Life in Essex as a young family was so much fun! Little Stefan was literally brought up in the University, and we attribute his current academic success to this.