T he cold January wind whips through your
lungs as you lift a night table from the trunk
of your old Volvo station wagon and turn to
face the door of your unfamiliar West End apart
ment—your new home for the spring semester
since having returned to Elon from studying
abroad. You're excited to be back at school, excited
to see your friends and excited at the prospect
of driving to Cook Out every night for the next
three weeks of Winter Term (for some reason, you
never saw one Cook Out in Copenhagen, Geneva,
Istanbul or wherever you were. Not one.)
The way you feel right now about being home
again—that happy giddy thank-the-Lord-I'm-
back-in-the-land-of-the-free thing? Well, that
might not last forever. The Elon Study Abroad
webpage calls the initial reaction many under
graduate students experience upon arriving home
or back at school the “Honeymoon” phase. It's
when you can't wait to be reunited with friends
and family you haven't seen in months, and when
they can't wait to have you tell them all about your
travels. Unfortunately the “Honeymoon” doesn't
last very long, and soon you might find yourself in
what the Study Abroad office calls the “Alienation"
phase.
Claire Mayo, a Junior at Elon from Knoxville,
Tennessee and a double major in French and
History writes in her essay “Reverse Culture
Shock” about her own “Alienation” phase after
returning to school from being abroad in
Montpellier a city on the southern coast of France:
“Because of the differences between France and
America, I find reentering the 'bubble' of an Ameri
can university more difficult than I had anticipat
ed... For instance, the ethnocentricity of the United
States shocks me. My peers are more interested in
relationship drama rather than the suffering hu
manity in Somalia or Syria. I find myself
seeking out individuals who can hold
intellectual conversations, and the few results from
my campaign are hardly encouraging.”
Wesley Anne Barden, a junior from Jackson
ville, Florida and double major in International
Studies and Political Science, experienced similarly
resentful feelings upon returning to school, but
noticed differences between Elon and her place
of study in Cape Town, South Africa that were
particular to her personal transition back to life at
college.
“My living situation was so different and I lived
in a city ...it was Cape Town, which is nice, but
there are bad parts and I didn't live in a luxurious
part. There are homeless people on the side of the
road as you walk down the street, and you had to
be careful because you could get mugged... Just
coming from that and then (being) here (at Elon)...
my surroundings were just such an intense part of
my experience and here they're not as much.”
Barden also commented on how much she
missed the people she had met in Cape Town upon
arriving back to school.
"I wasn't with Elon students, I was with other
students from other schools, and when you're
out of your comfort zone like that for so long, you
get to know people a lot better more quickly We
got to be really close. Those people (I met) live on
the West Coast, but then also I made friends in
Kenya and Zambia who, chances are. I'll never see
again. When you see them every day and you talk
to them throughout the day and then suddenly
they're gone...it was really hard."
Many students who have just re-entered the
country or returned to college find themselves
grappling with the wide disparities between their
American universities and the foreign cities they
lost themselves in for four long months. Every
thing seems less exciting, and everyone else's
perspectives on things seem narrower You start
to feel as if none of your friends or family can ever
® The Elon Study
Abroad webpage;
calls the initial reaction
many undergraduate
students experience
upon arriving home
or back at school the
‘Honeymoon’ phase.”
truly understand your experiences abroad; li :e
they don't even really care. You feel like you'v' lei
something behind, like you're in some weird ime
warp.
Luckily it gets better. At least for Mayo and
Barden, it has. Mayo concludes at the end of 1 er
essay that she has found “home” in several dkfer
ent places, including Elon and Montpellier; "T len
are people whom I love in each place, and in eac
location, 1 have a place where 1 can settle anc
construct a very comfortable, happy life." She go
on to admit that she “can never call a single plao
'home.' Instead, (she maintains) the viewpoint of;
sojourner who can pick up and move throughou:
the world with confidence and security"
Barden says it's her fellow Elon travelers who
have ultimately helped her to get back into the
swing of things. “I think I've readjusted...!! was a
little weird at first coming into Elon just because
of how different it is, but it helps having a friend
here who went with me...she kind of went throue
the same thing. A lot of my other friends studied
abroad too in other places and still had that sam
amazing experience. It's tough to adjust at first
but having people who are experiencing the saffi
emotions makes it a little easier"