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Curb Your Enthusiasm while talking about Studying Abroad
Thomas Ahonen
Updated Jan 06, 2015Save
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A friend of mine suggested I blog about the bad advice we’re given about studying abroad in another country. For example, she’s from Florida and was told before she came to the UK, never to wear jeans in London as everyone here wears trousers.
Well, I’m writing this from my my office in London in a pair of jeans. They’re office-appropriate jeans if you’re wondering… but still, of all the nuggets of advice you could give to someone… I have to admire that jeans were on the tip of their tongue.
Which got me thinking about what I was told before I did my semester studying abroad before my final year in Michigan. I think the most valuable piece of advice, and it’s been well confirmed by others who have gone abroad, is to curb your enthusiasm when you make that inevitable first trip back home.
Now you arrive back home, either back to stay or back to visit, and you want to hear what your friends have been up to and you can’t wait to tell absolutely everyone absolutely everything you’ve done while studying abroad. It’s natural to want to share your stories and your friends will invariably ask you “SO HOW WAS IT?!?”
What I need you to do is very important and I want you to obey because a lot of the rest of your visit depends on this very moment. I want you to curb your enthusiasm, keep it short and ask your friends what they’ve been up to.
You may be thinking to yourself, “Self… I’ve just spent a lot of money on this experience and I loved it, why wouldn’t I want to gush about how cool it was?!”
It’s because while you’ve been away, your friends and family have probably been continuing on with life as normal and will likely think you’re gloating or won’t be able to fully connect with what you’re saying unless they’ve been to the place themselves.
That sounds like a loaded statement that is really self-absorbed, but I’m not kidding. If you’ve been working all summer and a friend tells you that they’ve been running around temples, eating exotic foods, drinking cheap wine and swimming in the ocean (*for the midwesterners) then it can be particularly frustrating and insincere when they come to a complaint about a bus ride through Thailand.
For those who have not been with you on this trip, this is when they give you that glare that says, “You need to shut up, my air conditioning is broken in my car and I’ve been commuting to work longer than normal due to construction!"
Your friends can and will be happy you’ve had a great time, but take my advice:
Take it slow.
Jump back in your routine of banter and let stories unfold naturally.
Don’t forget to ask about what they’ve been up to.
If you do all the talking and throw a stack of photos at them, it’s going to be a long and boring welcome party.
Utilize Facebook and social media.
Use social media to post pictures and thoughts so you can stay connected- and more importantly, help people keep connected with your experiences. Keeping people in the loop makes for a less-alienating experience when you re-unite and your friends will also get to put faces to names of people you’ve met and can ask you questions about things they’ve seen. Now this point may be redundant that I’m telling you to use Facebook; but if you’re bad at updating and logging on, make a point to keep up and if you aren’t someone who typically uploads photos, take a stab at making a few albums.
Studying abroad can make you love or hate where you’re from more.
It can make you take a different perspective on how things operate in your home country. If you find yourself moaning about reverse culture-shock (going back home and saying “THIS would never happen in Hong Kong!!!”) then take a deep breath and bite your tongue. You may be going back, but nobody likes to be told that what they’re doing is crap, so don’t make people feel like they are less-than for not doing what you’re doing.
Be gracious.
If you are fortunate enough to have gotten the chance to go studying abroad and someone comments that you’re so lucky, it’s polite to agree and point out that you’ve worked and studied and it wasn’t all vacation. Nobody likes a peacock!