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After completing an enriching study abroad, most students are excited to return home and share their experiences with friends and family. Though they are returning to a familiar environment, many students have issues re-acclimating and may experience reverse culture shock.
About Re-Entry
How long and how strongly a student experiences reverse culture shock will depend on multiple factors, such as length of time away, previous travel, and frequency of communication with people back home while away. Students and parents should be prepared to for a re-acclimation period and should be patient with one another. Reverse culture shock has three phases:
- Honeymoon: During this phase you are excited to be at home and those at home are happy to have you back. Your friends and family are interested to hear about your time away and see your photos.
- Alienation: In this stage, you'll feel that people would rather talk about what happened to them while you were away than listen to your stories. You may start to feel bored because your familiar environment does not seem nearly as exciting as your study abroad program was. You may even feel like a foreigner in your own home. Your perspectives and interests may be different than they used to be, and your lifestyle may have changed to accommodate those new perspectives.
- Readjustment: Gradually, you will readjust to being at home. The shock of returning does dissipate with time and patience.
The best way to approach re-entry is to expect that there will be differences. People at home will have changed with time, but not nearly as much as you. An exciting part of the re-entry process will include creating a new lifestyle that combines the best of your old lifestyle and your overseas lifestyle.