There are only a few more weeks to go before the spring semester comes to an end. Some students are preparing for graduation, and others are preparing for upcoming exams and projects. Unfortunately, while all that excitement continues to spread on campus, many students, especially those studying on international student visas, are faced with an added task: They are experiencing culture shock. And many are still not adjusted to their new environment.
As an international transfer student from the British Virgin Islands studying communications, I surely suffered my fair share of culture shock. My first semester was a complete disaster. Moving away from the 59 square miles I had called home and finding a place in an enormous foreign country was completely frightening. So, it got me thinking: What is the whole experience like for the hundreds of other international students attending AU today?
"I had underestimated the challenges I would face being away from home," said Stephanie Ayeh, a sophomore in the School of International Service. "I found it difficult to converse with other students because I had a different accent."
Ayeh is from Ghana. The social values in her new environment conflicted with her own, she said.
"People seemed more independent of each other in friendships, and there is less personal contact than I am use to," she said. "In Ghana, your friends were people you were in class with and so on. But here I found that many people rarely forged any relationships inside the classroom."
Maxine Ariot, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences, said the differences between her home country of Haiti and the United States took some getting used to.
"I had to get accustomed to not saying good morning and afternoon all the time," she said. "I just learned to smile more."
Greeting a person in Haiti is a must, she said.
"It is an important part of the West Indian culture," she said. "I was shocked when people hardly answered me as I walked on campus, but I am over that now."
When we leave our culture, we often think that what happens in our country is the norm. We even expect that behaviors are universal until we are confronted with differences.
In my first day in class at AU, the professor asked me for my point of view on an issue. I was dumbfounded. I always believed a professor teaches and the student listens.
"It was hard to adapt to the teaching style, but I grew into it," Ariot said of the professor-student interactions in the classroom that were foreign from her home country. She said she began to follow along with the class participation routine to avoid looking odd.
Culture shock happens in many different ways, which means international students must learn to cope with it in a variety of different ways. In my Cross-Cultural Communication course, I adopted new tools to assist me with culture shock. Classes like this provide international students with invaluable insight into the cultures of many regions around the world, including here in the United States.
Ayeh and Ariot have joined several campus clubs and have worked hard to make friends to ensure they enjoy campus life.
"Campus life offered me diversity, but it came with complete shock," said Chihiro Murata, a junior from Japan, who is now spending her last semester at AU. "I think I was able to reduce my fear or awkwardness after my first semester though ... I dealt with my shock through sharing with others in the same situation like me."
Bram Greon, a professor in the School of International Service, said that to a certain degree, culture shock is unavoidable in many ways.
"It can be an important element in the process of getting a better understanding of not only the host culture, but [also] of your own values and norms."
For me, coping with homesickness and loneliness were part of the culture-shock routine. Then, as time passed, however, I learned to blend in, make friends and understand the language and teaching styles. It was indeed a process.
Greon said students should spend enough time in the host country to get over culture shock.
"One semester is not enough to see the positive effects of culture shock work themselves through," he said.
