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WELCOME BACK!
Study Abroad Programs welcomes you home and back to Vanderbilt. After spending a summer, semester, or a year abroad, you are likely experiencing mixed emotions – excitement, frustration, maybe even anxiety, as you readjust to American culture and campus life. In some ways, the transition to being back home may be tougher than your initial struggles with living abroad. After all, you expect to feel awkward and uncertain in a new country, but you don’t expect to feel like a stranger at home.
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Most students experience some level of re-entry shock or stress during this time of transition. Despite being in familiar surroundings, you are not the same person you were when you left to study abroad. You may perceive differences in yourself, in your friends and family, and in your surroundings. These changes can be difficult to handle, for you and for those around you. As a result of your study abroad experience, you are likely more self-disciplined, more confident, more independent, and more global-minded than ever before. You may now find your life at home and back on campus more limiting after a year abroad. At the same time, your friends on campus have also lived a semester or year without you and have “moved on” too. This may leave you feeling disjointed and disoriented.
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Coming home may not be as easy as you thought, but the following tips may help ease your readjustment:
- Recognize that re-entry is a time of transition. Keep the various stages of cultural adjustment in mind: initial euphoria; hostility and frustration; gradual adaptation; and adjustment. Remember the strategies you developed while adjusting to your host culture and apply them whenever possible.
- Keep an open mind and be patient as you ease back to your surroundings. Be flexible, allowing yourself, and those around you, time to adjust to new perspectives.
- Find outlets for your new insights and international experiences. You probably have very different perspectives about the world and the United States in particular. Think about ways to share those new insights in the classroom and through international programs and organizations on- and off- campus.
- Attend the Returnees Session scheduled at the beginning of each semester. Join other returnees and reflect on your abroad experiences and your readjustment.
- Keep your cross-cultural experience alive at Vanderbilt and in Nashville. Find ways to use your abroad experience in your life at home and in campus life. Check out the Returnees' pages and learn how to get involved.
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Again, we welcome you back to Vanderbilt. Please come by Study Abroad Programs to let us know how you are doing and share your abroad experiences with us. Volunteer to be a Study Abroad Ambassador and mentor future study abroad students! We hope to hear from each of you.
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