Cultural Adjustment
The Adjustment Process
This section helps you understand what intercultural adjustment is all about, how you might feel while abroad, and how to make this process a vibrant learning experience.
Spending all your time with other Americans will keep you from meeting locals, as will Zooming with loved ones at home instead of venturing outside to see what’s around you. Take advantage of invitations from your flatmates or join a local club or community organization. Go explore on your own or with one good friend. Remember, going abroad is about breaking away from what you know.
You will go through a process of cultural adjustment as you learn to operate in a different cultural system, with different signals, rules, meanings, values, and ideas. Your experience living in this host culture will change over time. Once the immediate sensations of excitement subside (the "honeymoon" phase), you may feel anxious, stressed, sad, or fatigued as things seem very…foreign. This is culture-shock represented by the curve below, though for some students it may look more like a roller coaster with several ups and downs:
Many students who study abroad go with the mistaken belief that they will have no cultural adjustment to make. Beware! Don’t mistake superficial similarities between countries for sameness. While the differences may seem subtle at first glance, closer examination often reveals very different attitudes, values, and social or cultural norms.
You may realize that what you knew from before, what was familiar and comfortable to you, is not helpful abroad. Here are strategies to help you cope and overcome culture shock:
- Take time to re-energize with your friends. Don’t feel guilty about hanging out and comparing experiences; you can do a lot of processing in these sessions. Just don’t isolate yourself from the host culture.
- Get out and explore. Strike off on your own, or pair up with a friend, be it another American on your program, a flatmate, or a local acquaintance you’ve cultivated. It’s good to have someone to experience things with or bounce ideas off, but it’s also good to explore on your own and see what life throws your way.
- Narrow your world. Focus your efforts on a neighborhood, street or even a single place, and try to get to know it well, using it as a window onto the rest of the culture.
- Widen your world. Wander around the city or take trips to places you’ve never heard of. Be curious and open to the possibilities around you. View unfamiliar things as mysteries to be investigated.
- If you have a hobby or interest you pursued at home, pursue it abroad. If you sang in a choir or played soccer, do that abroad to meet local people who share that interest!
- Keep a journal. Journals help you process your experience. You can focus on changes within yourself, what is going on around you, the weird and wonderful details of the culture, or anything else about your experience.
- Write letters. Letters and emails can help you formulate your impressions and communicate your experience with others; just be careful, you could alarm family and friends unnecessarily if you only write about your difficulties and not your successes!
- Set small, daily goals for yourself. “Today I’m going introduce myself to one new person.” “This evening I’ll accompany my flatmate to their relative’s home and see what happens.”
- Read. Reading a book about the culture and civilization, be it a history or the musings of another traveler, can be relaxing and informative and shed light on what you see or experience every day.
One final note: everyone experiences cultural adjustment differently. If you persist in trying, eventually the daily victories—when you have successfully adapted to one or another aspect of the culture—will far outweigh the setbacks and frustrations. You may be more or less stressed than your best friend, but inevitably everyone will have ups and downs, good days and bad, and moments of alternating homesickness and elation.
Customs and Values
Before you go abroad, it’s a good idea to start thinking about culture as being one part customs and one part values. When entering a different culture, you must be flexible about your customs, that is, the little things that make up your daily routine, the way you do things, the level of service or quality of life you expect. You should, however, be more reserved about your values, that is, the core beliefs that are important to you. It won’t hurt you to eat a food you are not accustomed to but say, for example, your host-parent makes a racist comment. You shouldn’t feel like you have to agree with them just for the sake of fitting in. Be respectful, but be true to your values, too.
There’s a connection between customs and values: the values of a culture are often expressed in its customs. As you adopt new customs, reflect on the values that underlie them and examine your own values. Is there something in this culture that you want to make a part of your own core values?
Global Food and Alcohol Culture
For cultures across the world, eating and food are of central importance to family and social life. A country’s eating habits and customs often suggest its values. As a guest in another culture, you should be open to trying as many different new customs as you can, and this means kinds of food and modes of eating. But be realistic: don’t expect yourself to eat beef if you’re a vegetarian or eat something you already know you don’t like.
While alcohol consumption varies in degree and social context from country to country, few countries consider the kind of drinking prevalent on American college campuses to be socially acceptable. Many countries do not have strict drinking ages and therefore alcohol, not being taboo, isn’t considered novel, and binge drinking is relatively rare.
In many destinations, you will find that 1) people drink more slowly than in the US, often while eating a meal, and 2) people are expected to hold their liquor. You may also note that, with the exception of clubs that are explicitly for the student population, there is a broader mix of people who socialize together. It is common in many countries for young adults to go to the pub with parents or a young sibling in tow. So, conduct yourself for a mixed-age crowd.
Traveling and Getting to Know Your Host City/Country
Many students choose to travel independently, as time, money, and academic obligations permit. While HWS students are free to travel independently, they must do so in keeping with the Colleges’ International Travel Policy.
A term abroad opens opportunities for travel. Think about what you’d like to see and accomplish while abroad, and develop a strategy and budget to guide your travels. Perhaps you have two weeks to travel after your program. Is there a particular place you want to go? An event you want to attend? People you want to meet? Make a list of things you hope to see and experience while abroad. Maybe you want to make a detailed plan, or maybe you want to leave room for spontaneity - but thinking about how you want to explore now will enable you to make better use of your time.
The city where you are living is your entry-point into the study of the nation as a whole. Students abroad can spend a lot of time getting to know every corner of the city, or travel most weekends to other cities or countries. These trips will not offer the level of in-depth access you will get by regularly exploring the city you live in while abroad.
If you do travel outside of the excursions that may be built into your program, consider limiting yourself to your country, especially if you’re on a language immersion program. Traveling around a country and visiting its different regions and cities can give you a fascinating comparative view and a sense of the diversity of the place. Taking a break entirely from the language for a weekend will delay or push back the progress you’ve already made. Also, traveling in a country where you speak the language (even not very well) will always be a more in-depth experience than traveling through countries where you don’t speak the language.