News > October 11, 2007

By Liza Greenspun | News editor

Over half of the students study abroad at some point during their university careers, and their lives are changed, in ways both obvious and subtle, as a result. For many, the transition back into life at the university can present as much of a challenge as living in a foreign culture.

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After experiencing such cultural places as La Alhambra in Granada, Spain, many students find it difficult to return to campus. (Liza Greenspun/Old Gold & Black)

“Some people are just dreadfully unhappy when they come back,” said Johnne Armentrout, assistant director of counseling at the university. “For some people they really found themselves when they were overseas.”

According to the American Intercontinental University Study Abroad Program Web site, this period of transition has been titled “re-entry shock,” or “reverse culture shock,” “officially recognizing the experience of returning from living or studying abroad as a genuine period of stress.”

According to AIU, symptoms of re-entry shock include boredom, frustration that no one wants to hear about their experiences and changes in personal relationships.

In order to help students prepare for their departure from and return to campus, a three-part international studies course will be offered at the university for the first time ever.

All three sessions will begin the last week of October. The course will be taught by Julia Shuster, program coordinator of the center for international studies.

According to Shuster, the first part of the course, INS 150, will meet six times and occurs the semester before the student travels abroad.

While abroad, students will complete journal entries and other activities as part of INS 151, and after returning, INS 152 will help students cope with re-entry shock, as well as teach them how to evaluate their experiences. Each of the experiential learning classes is a prerequisite for the following one, and together all three are worth 1.5 credit-hours.

Anyone interested in taking the class should contact Shuster.

“We need to prepare students for these experiences,” Shuster said, “particularly the re-entry process.”

The university is ranked fourth in the nation in the percentage of students who study abroad, behind Yeshiva University in New York City, the University of Denver and the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn.

These number prove that the university needs to address re-entry shock, as many students expressed feeling some of the symptoms when they returned.

“The people I was closest to didn’t know what I had gone through over there,” said senior Melissa Yarbrough, who studied in Salamanca during fall 2006.

“I felt not as much involved in anything.”

Albert Brown, ’07, said he experienced similar feelings of disconnection to peers after spending a full year in Japan.

“I tried to reconnect,” he said of relationships with past friends, “but it didn’t really evolve to anything.”

Armentrout, who has counseled students who had trouble re-adjusting to the university, said, “For some people it’s learning to relate to their friends and to their family in a different way.”

She said it can be disappointing to students when their friends and family do not seem to care about their abroad experiences.

“I really wish some people had reached out to me more,” Brown said. “I felt totally disowned.”

He said he tried to participate in activities he had been involved with before leaving for Japan, but that he could not find his place in these activities as before.

Other students, Armentrout said, feel confined when they return, as the university and Winston-Salem seem to offer fewer opportunities than life in other countries.

“For some people when they go abroad they really are able to access a different part of themselves and they don’t know if they can bring that other part of them here,” she said.

Yarbrough said that being abroad made her feel much more independent. “Sometimes if I saw an airplane I felt the need to get on it because I wasn’t traveling anymore,” she said.

Yarbrough said upon her return to America that she was nostalgic for the opportunities she had while abroad to experience different cultures through easy travel within the European Union.

Despite the severity of re-entry shock, there are many ways that students can cope with these symptoms.

The University of Maryland International Programs’ Web site suggests realizing that returning home will present challenges, remembering that those who were not abroad have also had valuable experiences and looking to other outlets to share stories.

“I recommend having a support network of other people who were abroad,” Shuster said. “Find outlets to keep your international studies going.”

Senior Beth Kentner spent a semester studying in Salamanca and a summer in Barcelona as a marketing intern. Shesaid it is important to think about both cultures: the one experienced while abroad as well as the culture at home.

“Don’t necessarily criticize one or the other,” she said, “but compare them and look at them in a positive way.”

Armentrout said that if students are really having trouble adjusting, they should not hesitate to seek help at the university counseling center, as it often helps to have an unbiased source to speak to.

Counselors at the university will refer anyone who is experiencing significant symptoms of depression and anxiety for medication, she said.