Dealing with reverse culture shock

Interesting article in the Boston Globe on dealing with reverse culture shock. Anyone who spends extensive time abroad has to face the issue of re-adjusting to his or her home culture.  This article focuses mainly on college students who spend summers abroad, and particularly those who visit less developed nations.

Since she returned to Boston in July from the West African country, Stewart said, she has sometimes felt overwhelmed by the differences between her own country and the one she left behind. She spent six weeks studying in Senegal, a largely Muslim country where she needed to use French to make herself understood.

Stewart, like other college students who spend their summers abroad, is experiencing reverse culture shock. It is an issue colleges take more seriously than in the past, as a growing number of college students go abroad to non traditional sites outside of Western Europe, such as China, Cuba, and South Africa, according to the Institute of International Education, which tracks study abroad.

Back home hanging out with friends, returning students sometimes feel estranged. …

“The more they’re able to find their own routines and exist without hassle in that new culture, then it’s more difficult for them to come back home, where everybody is the same,” said Dawn Anderson, director of the Office of International Study Programs at Northeastern University.  “It’s difficult to find people to talk to about what they just experienced because the change is so dramatic and so great, and you really can’t articulate it to anyone.”

Stewart said her weeks spent in a distinctly different culture affected even her view of daily rituals such as using a cellphone and watching strangers hurriedly brush past her without a word.

“In Senegal, no matter who you see, you say hello to,” she said. “Coming back to America, where people just pass each other on the sidewalk all the time and don’t even acknowledge each other, it’s kind of a cold feeling.”

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