If you’re anything like me, you spent well over a year just planning how to get to your destination abroad—not even including the years before that had been filled with the dream of studying abroad. Once I finally got to Australia, it felt like all of these hopes and expectations I had been thinking about for years were finally becoming a reality. It was such a full-circle moment for me.
That being said, sometimes you plan so much for going abroad that you completely forget that you need to go home at some point! Everyone’s experience with returning back to their home country is different. You may be super excited to see all your friends and family, sleep in your own bed, or see your dog! Or you could be sad that this chapter is ending and not want to leave this new life that you have made for yourself. Or maybe you even feel a little bit of both! In my case, I was feeling mixed emotions: excited to see my friends and family and tell them all my stories, but not wanting to leave the new friends I had made or the place I was living.
So here are a few ways I helped myself adjust to life back home!
Plan a little surprise to look forward to at home
The idea of getting to see my friends was a big help in my thought process in returning home. I thought it might be a good idea to make it a little more fun and surprise some of them! I made sure to only tell a couple of my close friends what date I was coming back, and I surprised all the rest by knocking on their doors! I even came back in time to surprise one of my friends on her birthday. The thought of surprising all of them made me very excited to get back to my previous life, and I highly recommend trying this as well.
Find your people who will listen
A hard reality for me and many other study abroad students to comprehend is that not everyone back home will be willing to hear your stories. In a perfect world, all of my friends would be just as enthusiastic as I was about all of the cool things I had been able to experience in Australia and my trips to New Zealand. However, this is not the case most of the time, and there was only a handful of people I was close with—or who had previously studied abroad—who were very intentional about wanting to hear about everything I had done. I highly recommend finding those people who are willing to listen, because talking about a whole other lifestyle can be very hard for people to understand who have not experienced it.
This was not something I had thought about until I got home, and some people were not as receptive and told me to stop talking about my time abroad. That was very hard to hear, knowing that I wanted to share the past five months of my life with my friends, but not all wanted to hear about it. While it may hurt for someone to say that to you, try to understand that it might be hard for them to see things from your perspective and instead share your stories with those who truly want to hear them.
Focus on what you have back, not what you don’t have anymore
Another trap that I found myself falling into when I left Australia was thinking about all of the things that I would no longer have when I got back to the United States. I wouldn’t have the five-minute walk to the beach at sunset or my favorite coffee shop. But it is so important to remember that there were things that you missed about home before you left, and those things were still waiting for you when you returned.
I knew I would miss my family, and getting to hug them again was so exciting. I was going to get back to some of my favorite restaurants and pizza that I had been craving while abroad. I had one more semester of school to look forward to with some of my best friends who had been with me since freshman year. There was so much to look forward to! While your home and the place that you studied abroad are all going to have their own unique and beautiful things about them, focus on the good things that you have waiting for you in both places as opposed to the things that you will miss.
Alex Dashner, University of Tampa, studied abroad in Australia with TEAN.
