Allen O’Barr, director of Counseling and Psychological Services, said studying abroad can change students’ outlooks, especially if they’ve never been outside of the country before.
“I think the one that I see most frequently is students having gone abroad and having had a very eye-opening experience to the world and then when they return back to campus, they’re kind of back into the same old grind and it isn’t as exciting as study abroad,” he said.
O’Barr said he has seen students at CAPS who have had a great experience abroad and have difficulty coming back, as well as those who had a difficult experience while abroad, such as a traumatic event, and are now trying to process it.
“We do the same thing that we do with any student who came in with the issue,” O’Barr said.
Dori Brady, an adviser in the Study Abroad Office, said they do not usually see students struggling to readjust when they come back to campus because they are typically only working with students to transfer credits at that point. But she said people in the department knows reverse culture shock exists, and they try to address it.
Brady said students sometimes have unfulfilled expectations that friends are going to care more about their experience abroad.
Lucy Julian, a senior who studied abroad in Argentina in fall 2014 and Thailand in spring 2015, said during her first semester abroad she felt she was missing out on what was going on at home, but she adjusted better during her second semester away.
“The second semester, I kind of figured out how not to pay attention to what was going on (at home), which is important for getting the most out of your experience,” she said.
