Culture Shock May Be A Normal Thing To Experience While Studying Abroad

Studying abroad during college is an experience recommended for every college student. Spending a semester or a year in another country may be the best education you've ever received, and no matter where you travel, you'll likely return home an altered, more mature individual with enlightened views about the world. Why is a study abroad experience so life-changing for college students? The answer actually has a lot to do with getting over culture shock for the first time in your life.

If you have never spent longer than a few weeks in another country, it is likely that you have never truly experienced culture shock. Culture shock is what comes after the excited, elevated feelings of being a tourist in a new place have worn off. You won't truly experience the shock of being in a country very different from your own unless you are staying in one place long-term. A semester or year studying abroad provides the perfect context for experiencing and, most importantly, letting go of culture shock.

What exactly is culture shock? The set of emotions experienced during culture shock can run the gamut from pleasant curiosity to irritation and even anger. After all, you will be living in a country that has different laws, social norms, gender roles, manners, and customs from the place where you grew up. You will experience a language barrier and even a body language barrier. You will make blunders and feel ill-equipped to digest what you are experiencing, at times. In other words, your cultural perceptions and the rules by which you have thus far lived your life will be challenged.

The good news is that culture shock goes away and is replaced with adjustment and feelings of acceptance for your host country's culture, beliefs, and values. It is the period of adjustment that provides the most educational moments, as you slowly begin to understand and embrace your host culture.

Of course, it is up to you to ease your transition into a new culture. Many students subconsciously critique their host country according to the standards of their own country. By adopting a tolerant attitude, you will soon begin to accept your host culture as an equally valid way of life.

It is helpful to arrive at your study-abroad destination with an open mind and the intent to meet the locals, see the world through their eyes, and experience their daily life. It will be much more difficult to adjust to your host country if you study abroad with the intent to carry on your same activities and ways of life. In order to expand your world view, you must try new things.

Homesickness for your own country is perfectly normal and to be expected. If you experience homesickness, don't fight it. It is your way of coming to terms with separation from your home and family, as well as the drastic cultural changes you may be experiencing.

Effective Study Strategies Make The Uphill Climb An Easier Hike

As a student, you know how much of your time is spent studying. No one wants to spend more time than they need to on school work, especially when you are young and trying to enjoy what you feel are the best years of your life. If you could apply effective study strategies, you could reduce the time spent in your books, while raising your grades at the same time.

Unfortunately, most teachers are only trained in imparting the knowledge concerning their own particular field of study, which is fine. Not too many teachers are going to take the time to help individual students develop study skills necessary to absorb the information during hours spent in private study at home. The reason for this is because study skills are a separate subject altogether which can be applied to Math, English, Social Studies, or whatever. So the student's lack of study skills is not the fault of the teacher, but rather on the system itself which has failed to provide the tools necessary for success.

The schools, teachers, and even parents usually expect the student to simply "do whatever it takes" to pass their courses. This is because if they were to share in the responsibility, they themselves would have to become teachers of how to improve study skills. For teachers, this is not really a part of their job description. It is extra work for them. Likewise, parents have jobs and busy schedules, and most of them have never been properly trained in good study skills themselves either.

What's Missing From Our Primary Education?

Study Skills and Strategies, Among Many Other Things

Our school systems have failed us in many ways. We should have mandated certain subjects in the lower grades so that our students could excel when they finally arrived to the higher grades. Among some of the "missing" fundamentals in our elementary education are:

• Personal finance
• Cooking
• Personal hygiene
• Nutrition and health
• Study skills and strategies
• Choosing a career
• Gardening and planting
• Elementary economic principles

Many of these things are taught in school, but very rarely or never at the elementary level where they would be mandatory rather than elective. So we end up with college graduates who cannot balance a checkbook or cook for themselves when they go out on their own. Most do not even understand the importance of practicing basic health principles which would save them and others from diseases and numerous miseries later in life. These are basic life skills which can be considered elementary "survival skills" in a world where you are expected to fend for yourself.

Effective study skills and strategies are among the most important of these "missing" academia subjects, because they are the hub by which other skills and talents are developed. Like the spokes of a wheel, differing fields of knowledge project in a radial manner from the hub of effective study habits producing a strong and well supported wheel of life skills.