Coming back from summer is always an odd experience, because you always return a little different. Origin doesn’t really effect this, I am sure both American students and foreign students can identify with the feeling of metamorphosis experienced during summer break.
As an international student, I find summer to be an extremely grounding experience. I get the chance to leave America and go back to my home country and when I return from it, I always feel as though I have experienced a reincarnation of my whole being.
Studying abroad is no easy task, especially not in America. Here the culture shock is as easy to resist as a hurricane would be. It sweeps you away and you’re caught up in the new smells, sights, sounds and perspectives. It is a double-edged sword.
Though you are broadening your understanding of the world, a part of your former identity is being tarnished in the process. It’s very hard to achieve a balance within one’s self in general, but the difficulty increases when you have to create a balance between a foreign culture and your own.
When you first arrive as a freshmen, this is the battle that you go into. Funnily enough, though I feel like I’ve adjusted well to being at UT, sometimes I still feel like I’m in the middle of this battle. The key to adjusting and finding balance is extremely simple,
even a tad cliche; it is simply this: be open.
You will go through many changes as you learn and live as a UT student, but try not to fear that these changes will alter who you are in such a way that you will no longer be able to recognize yourself. It won’t.
Our identities are far more durable than we give them credit for. When we allow ourselves to be open to the world around us we are not so bound by the anxiety we feel about a potential loss of our cultural or personal identity.
Now the question you may be asking is how you can learn to be open. This isn’t a question that has a single textbook answer, because different people have different interpretations of what this actually means. Sometimes how one personally defines “openness” may seem to an
other person as just an excuse to partake in unproductive activities and vices.
That’s why it’s important to participate in the new things that you feel comfortable doing.
Stop drinking when you feel
you’ve had enough; talk to the person who sits beside you in class, whom you would never talk to normally but who seems really sweet; join the club that you saw advertised in Plant Hall; go to every event that takes your fancy.
Make friends with people who share and help you to reinforce your priorities, because they’ll be there to get your feet back on the ground when the fun times start hitting too hard.
Most importantly, keep in sight the things that remind you of home, whether it be jewelery, photographs, phrases or music. One would think that keeping the pieces of home that remind you most of your origins would make you homesick (which they sometimes do), but to be honest, having a foundation is what ensures a strong identity.
And it’s those objects from home, those objects of your cultural identity that allow you to flourish even in such new surroundings.
Though I have spoken mostly from my viewpoint as an international student, this article is also meant to reach out to American students who may be in Florida for the first time or anyone who finds the transition difficult. I know you don’t have to change continents to feel like you’ve left the familiar behind. I hope all of you will feel that you can find a level of openness that will allow you to achieve the balance you will need to flourish in this new place and make it a home away from home.
Philippa Hatendi can be contacted at phatendi@spartans.ut.edu