The grief of global graduates

Me (Grace Cushnie), travelling Canada during my exchange year.

Stepping off the plane, returning home after my exchange year, I had expected the familiar embrace of home to wash over me like a warm blanket on a cold night. Instead, I found myself struggling with a feeling of displacement. There was no longer a sense of safety and familiarity in the walls of my home. Friends around me felt different, as did just about everything. I was different.

I spent the next three months in bed, depressed.

What I had experienced was reverse culture shock (RCS), along with 70% of other exchange students returning home.

The complex psychological phenomenon is experienced by many individuals returning home after an extended period abroad, from students to soldiers. Its symptoms display in several emotional challenges, including:

o   a sense of loss

o   alienation

o   anger

o   anxiety

o   changed relationships with family and friends

o   compulsive fears

o   depression

o   disorientation

o   helplessness

o   hostility

o   separation

o   stress

o   value confusion

(The University of Kansas, U.S. Department of State, Marquette University)

The symptoms can persist for day, weeks, or even months. Three in my case.

I would explain RCS as a type of grief, an intense ache for both the life you built and the person you became while away. I spent the year on exchange in Canada, where everyday was a new experience. I spent my days meeting different people, and having interesting conversations, often with other exchange students who came from such diverse backgrounds. I travelled all the time, challenging myself to climb mountains, drive on the wrong side of the road, talk to strangers, organising myself enough to solo travel…

Then, I came home, back to familiarity. I hated it.

Friends get bored of your stories, their own anecdotes and routines sound like distant echoes, a past life. My home felt restricting. Things that once seemed normal completely stood out, I felt like a foreigner in my own country. I just did not slot right back in as suspected. This is characterised as the ‘dampened euphoria’ stage of RCS.

Then, the symptoms set in. My relationships changed with those around me, I became angry, and then severely depressed.

Nicole Eaton (25) was an international student in the UK, and returned to the USA last summer. She experienced RCS and, similarly to myself, it heavily affected her mental health.

Nicole Eaton (25), adventuring in the UK during her exchange.

She says: "Coming back was awful. I assumed returning home to the USA after a year in the UK would be somewhat a seamless transition. I had missed my friends, home, dog…but that longing for was just replaced by my other home, my other friends. It was almost harder missing that other life than it was returning to the one I had been grieving for.

"I went back to my routine. I walked the dog in the morning, took my part time job back up in a restaurant, went back to weekly brunches with my friends, dinner and TV with my family in the evenings. Nothing was the same as it had been, though. Life went on while I was away, which I think is something that anyone who goes away underestimates. Things change and you just aren’t apart of it. You change too, but in a different direction. I found it impossible to bridge the gap between the two. I lost contact with a lot of my friends, and often butt heads with family members.

"It put me into a place of isolation, and my mental health really took a toll. I am on track to a better mindset now, but I really did get low. I had to go onto medication for a few months and start therapy".

Juanita Raya (22), a Colombian exchange student in Canada, also suffered from RCS.

"It took over my life for those few first weeks at home", she says. "I had to readjust to the fast pace of Colombian life, and I just felt rushed. I didn’t get a chance to grieve my experiences and lifestyle in Canada, it was just straight back to normality. I had an anger come over me that I just never expected. I was so bitter to everyone around me that I made my home unpeaceful, and it was just something I couldn’t help. I hated it. I was completely overwhelmed at having to adjust so quickly. No one understood, which was so much more upsetting. They thought I wasn’t happy to be back home, that I was a different, bitter, person. I was just sad and trying my hardest to be the person they expected. I was a new person trying to slot right back into the place of my old self, I didn’t fit anymore.

"It was so alienating and stressful to not be what was expected of me".

Yiting Sha (24), a Chinese exchange student who too spent the year in Canada, experienced significant cultural changes.

Yiting Sha (24), during her exchange year in Canada.

She says: "I had extreme culture shock when I went to Canada. Everything was completely different. Culture, language, university, people, food, humour, even nature. It took me months to figure out my new temporary life.

"I did, however, learn to absolutely love it.

"I became a different person in Canada. I went from an anxious person to effortlessly inserting myself into strangers’ conversations, simply because I had to. Being new to somewhere completely different forces you out of old habits, it makes you want to meet others and leads to you having the most wonderful experiences.

"This adventurous personality wasn’t so welcomely received back in China. I felt myself having to bite my tongue when I was about to say something I never would have before my exchange. I squashed this new personality that I loved, attempting to fit back into the shape my culture suggests of me.

"My eyes opened up to my country while I was away from it. I had noticed several things I was once oblivious to. I kind of fell out of love with it a little bit. I was allowed to think differently in the West than I feel that I can here, and it made me feel unwelcome. I felt confused about who to be, as either way I lose something".

Aamena Meidell, the Student Exchange Officer at De Montfort University, states she sees signs of RCS frequently in students returning home to the university.

"So many students get back into contact with me when they are back showing signs", she says, "both minor and severe, and whether they know it or not".

She claims the most frequent signs she has experienced are "students feeling like nobody understands them, as those around them are living their lives as normal. They experience a lot of boredom because their time is no longer limited, so they no longer feel pushed to live everyday to the fullest. They become more critical towards what once was 'normal' and 'familiar' because they are seeing them through a new perspective. They desperately miss the life, people, and culture at their host destinations. They feel stuck, not being able to share, nor apply, what they have learnt".

RCS is such a common experience amongst returning exchange students, yet it is something not widely known of. An incredible amount of research and knowledge has gone into defining culture shock, yet only 20% of international students struggle with culture shock while 70% experience reverse culture shock. Much more can be done to protect the mental health amongst the UK’s students, especially after the Covid Pandemic which triggered a 25% increase in prevalence of anxiety and depression worldwide. When we are already in a mental illness epidemic, it is so incredibly important that more work goes into protecting exchange students returning home and experiencing RCS.

Aamena advices students suffering with RCS to "make future plans, it is so important to have something to look forward to. Share your experiences with other exchange students, they understand. Record your experiences and reflections, it relieves some of the psychological load of the symptoms because you can relive it a little. Stay in touch with friends made overseas, meet up with them if possible, or invite them to visit you. Experience some of what you did there, perhaps cook a meal you had frequently or do some activity you relate to your exchange. Connect with international groups that are local to you, such as student societies. Being around people who are different will keep that sense of adventure and learning that is so key to the exchange experience alive".