WHITNEY CURTIS | news editor

Re-entering America after going abroad can be a difficult process; here's some advice.

“I thought, I’m an American. How can I feel weird in my own country?”

Sophomore communication studies major and resident of South Africa for nine years, Laura Volkman, expressed what many students feel after returning home from being abroad in a very different country and culture.

Although most students planning to go abroad are somewhat prepared for and aware of the culture shock awaiting them when they step off the plane and into the country of their choice, perhaps not quite as many are ready for a similar “reverse-culture shock” when stepping off of the return flight, back into American culture.

“They [students] feel like aliens—almost new to this country again,” Associate Vice President for Internationalization Matt Browning said.

Study abroad, world missions, and other international opportunities often leave students feeling frustrated once back in America, Browning shared.

“Students are bored here. They have been hanging out with people with AIDS or renowned scholars, and now they feel like, ‘I’m back where I started.’ Another issue students face is called reverse homesickness. Many students had a great time and now they miss where they were,” Browning said.

One of the most common frustrations of a recent re-entered student is the feeling of guilt toward the comparative affluence of American culture and the disappointment one experiences when his or her ideas for change are not accepted.

“Cross-cultural experiences change us greatly- we expect our culture or those around us to change also. It’s very easy to become cynical or judgmental [but when we do] it becomes more difficult to share the good and to help those closest to us adopt our new values or to see things the way we saw them. We must be fair in our expectations of other people and ourselves,” Focus International Coordinator Adam Carpenter said.

Junior theology major Kimberly Foster who studied in Mexico for ten weeks last summer believes both cultures have their positive and negative aspects, but admits that it took her a while to come to that conclusion.

“America is not the worst country in the world. Remember your experience as a study abroad student is limited,” Foster said.

Upon returning to the U.S., students also find that it is hard to find adequate words to express to their friends and family the extent of their life changing experiences. Carpenter and Browning both suggest students begin talking to their peers by telling brief stories (rather than a long history of their experience) first.

“Be ready to share powerfully, but briefly. We’re trying to encapsulate a life experience in a ten second question. If we give them an appetizer, maybe a strong emotion than they can take that and say, ‘Oh, that’s nice,’ or they can take it and ask another question—give your listener something to want to grab onto,” Carpenter said.

Although, it is important to be brief with peers and those who ask fleeting questions, it is perhaps equally important to have at least one someone to talk to at length.

“If they feel like they need to talk to someone, the counseling center can help with the debriefing process so that they can adapt to this culture again,” clinician and practicum student at the Counseling Center Julie Woltil said.

Woltil also said that some students in the past have created support groups with other APU returning students. In the support groups students can discuss their experiences with one another and help each other cope with being back in the U.S.

And while communication is key for those returning from being abroad, many students and advisors feel that prayer and reflection are most important in the re-entry process.

“This is now a part of who you are. How would God have you use this?” Carpenter said.

Dave Dunaetz, a first-year APU psychology professor who lived in France for seventeen years said he encourages students to not expect people to understand them, but to keep trying to share their experiences and to continue to learn from those experiences.

“Spend lots of time in prayer, and try to figure out what God wants you to do with it,” Dunaetz said.

Senior communication studies major Noel Le remembers feeling helpless and wasteful when she returned to the United States from a mission trip to Cambodia this last summer. She desperately wanted to be able to change the living situations of those that she connected with over the summer, but felt incapable of doing so from the U.S.

“It’s hard when you come back. It sinks in. Now you’re back in the States,” Le, said. “Now what do you do? I had to remember that even though I can’t change the situation, prayer does.”

Perhaps the worst thing one can do is to try and forget the experience ever happened. However, Browning suggests that that is exactly what some students try to do. He encourages students to not waste the experience, but instead to try to make it a part of them forever.

“Some people just want to be accepted again, and so they jump back into American culture,” Browning said. “They don’t know what to do with this new part of them. Don’t waste the lesson. You have been ruined for the ordinary.”