CHALLENGE PAPER
- 1. UGST-1002-001 Change, Challenge and Choice Fall 2014 Assignment: CHALLENGE PAPER Surname, name Student ID: Signature Morión Castilla, Carmen 201600730
- 2. INDEX INTRODUCTION 1 pg TOPIC DESCRIPTION 2-4 pg STRATEGIES, TOOLS AND RESOURCES FOR COPING 4-7 pg SUMMARY 7 pg REFERENCES 8 pg
- 3. Cultural shock on international students Introduction The number of international students is increasing worldwide. As time passes by more and more students seem to muster the courage to pack their things and launch into the unknown. Reasons are many and varied. Students want to have new personal experiences, travel, get to know different people or just have fun; but probably the most common motives are enriching their careers, learning a new language and opening future possibilities. One way or another, the lives of these students face a dramatic change for a certain period of time. When we think about exchange students, it seems like travelling and partying is the first thing that pops into our heads. No doubt an experience abroad is an amazing opportunity and can be absolutely wonderful and fun. But how about taking a closer look? They get to a new country on their own, and they are unaware of the social practices, customs, norms and rules of said country. Things are not predictable anymore. These students are alone and have to face a huge amount of new situations and feelings in a relatively short period of time. On top of that, does anybody wonder what it is like for these people when they go back home? Readjusting to one’s own home culture’s daily life can be even harder than it was adjusting to that of a host country. What is the effect of this cultural and reverse cultural shock on international students? Well, that is exactly what this paper aims to respond. In the first place, I will give a deeper insight of these two concepts to later identify strategies, tools and resources for coping with them, and finally give a summary of my main findings. I have been a sojourner student in different countries and I have faced different types of cultural and reverse cultural shocks in every of them. Therefore I can say I am much familiarized with this theme. That is the reason why I believe writing about this topic is a great chance for me to share the knowledge I have acquired with other people. I will combine firsthand facts based on my own experience with different MRU empirical and theoretical sources in order to make the content of this paper as accurate and complete as possible.
- 4. Topic description P. Alder’s (1975) defines Cultural shock as a set of emotional reactions to the loss of perceptual reinforcements from one’s own culture, to new cultural stimuli which have little or no meaning, and to the misunderstanding of new and diverse experiences. It may encompass feelings of helplessness, irritability, and fears of being cheated, contaminated, injured or disregarded. (p.13) Reverse cultural shock is similar in definition to cultural shock but it focuses on the difficulties of re-adapting, re-adjusting and re-assimilating into one’s own home culture after one has sojourned or lived in another cultural environment (K.F Gaw, 2000, p. 85). Common difficulties returnees face include: disorientation, stress, value confusion, anger, hostility, academic problems and social withdrawal. In fact, Children and adolescents experience greater severity of reverse culture shock than adults (p.84).There are different variables that affect an individual’s ability to cope with the difficulties and stress of both cultural shocks, including demographic factors, cultural-specific knowledge and skills, personality, social support and cultural distance (C.A. Lombard, 2014, p.175). So what do you do when you are alone in a country thousands of kilometers away from home where you do not know anybody? Based on the alternatives presented by Ward et al (2001) and Anderson (1994) and on my own experience abroad, I have come up with four main behavioral patterns people tend to follow when facing cultural shock: (1) Trying to make your life in the host country as similar as possible as your life in your home country. It usually includes: socializing only with people from your same country, a continual use of your mother tongue, spending great amount of time connecting with friends and family from the home country on Skype and other social networks, the overvalue of typical features of the home country and undervalue of characteristics of the host country and a great feeling of happiness when it comes to going back home for good. (2) Idealizing the host county and condemn your home country. This trend is not as common as the last one but definitely happens as well. It usually includes: socializing only with native people (not even with other exchange
- 5. students), condemning people from your country who keep socializing with people from their same place, the almost exclusive use of the foreign language, and feelings of stress and anxiety when it comes to going back home for good. (3) Trying to enjoy and experience as much as possible the differences and peculiarities of the host country. It usually includes: socializing with as many different people as possible both natives and other exchange students, trying to learn the foreign language, being open minded about the different ways of doing things, assessing and comparing the characteristics and values of the host and the home country and a feeling of confusion when it comes to going back home for good. (4) “Walk away behavior pattern”. It usually includes a high feeling of anxiety and non belonging, social withdrawal and a feeling of relief when the time to go back home arrives. It is a common pattern when the student decided to go abroad for what I will call a non hefty reason, such as a boyfriend or girlfriend also moving to the host country. This paper is not going to judge the different behaviors of people. However, I think it is clear to everybody that a productive experience abroad is the one in which sojourner students are able to effectively cope with the stresses of cultural shock so that they can synthesize the best elements of both cultures. Things happen to people in strange places that would not happen to them at home (Nunez, 1996) and these new happenings, this bunch of different situations and patterns force you to think and behave differently. If you are not tolerant enough, if you are not able to reach the appropriate level of open mindedness, if you are scared to change, If you stay stuck to your way of thinking and proceeding, if the reason number one of going abroad is not yourself, you are extremely likely to face high difficulties to adapt to the new environment. Besides, these people tend to obtain less personal and academic benefits because they stuck to their thoughts and patterns and did not learn as much as they could from the potential situation they were living. These people would therefore face little reversal culture shock when going back to their home countries (Huff, 2001). But is this what an international experience is supposed to be about? Being out of the Comfort Zone requires opening your mind, speed in thinking, accepting, adapting and acting if you want to success. If you are able to do this, your experience abroad will have made you grow as a person. You will have been able to discover new aspects of your personality and redefine others. Variety would have given
- 6. you the chance of comparing and assessing. Information is power, and now you are able to realize that things you thought were right are not anymore, and things you thought were wrong maybe had a reason for being. You will have a broader view, more tolerance, more perspectives and more choices. You will become more aware of your own values, believes and attitudes, which will allow you to synthesize the best elements of both cultures. Basically you will experience a very high personal development. However, it is precisely for the people who better adapt to a foreign culture and who felt personally satisfied with their experience abroad for whom the re-adjusting process, i.e. the reverse culture shock is more difficult (Huff, 2001). In fact, I would describe the personal discordance I have felt back at home as the most difficult hurdle in the entire circle of international life. Strategies, tools and resources for coping Based on the information below, it can be said that all sojourner students face both cultural and reverse cultural shock. However, different factors such as the reason for moving, tolerance, adaptability, personality and self concept will determine to which extent students will be more or less affected. In this section I will examine the unique challenges or stresses that cultural shock and reverse cultural shock present and the coping strategies and resources that can help students deal with them. I will start by analyzing cultural shock and later proceed with the assessment of reverse cultural shock. Cultural shock As mentioned in the topic description, the main stresses that cultural shock presents are feelings of helplessness, insecurity, irritability, frustration, confusion, fears of being cheated, contaminated, injured or disregarded and even grief and bereavement for significant others left behind (Ward et al., 2001). This is without including other acculturative and lifestyle stressors such as language barrier, different educational environment, socio cultural situations, discrimination and loneliness (Lin & Yi, 1997). But at the same time, these young students also have a powerful opportunity for
- 7. transformation, a chance to glimpse and grasp their full potential and search for deeper meaning in their lives (Anderson, 1994) When I arrived to Canada I experienced feelings of confusion, grief for the left behind, educational environment differences and loneliness. But as it happens every time we choose to change, we have to accept that we both win and lose some things. When I say loss I refer to the loss of the comfort zone -the loss of known norms and patterns, the loss of proximity to friends and family and the loss of predictability in our daily life among others. So how should we deal with the loss to make the most of our experience? Well, in the very first place you have to accept your new situation and the best way to do so, especially if you are having a bad time, is to implement an Emotion focused constructive coping strategy. An Emotion focused strategy consists on recognizing and regulating emotions to tolerate or eliminate stress (Weiten et al., 2012). You have to keep calm and accept that all the feelings you are experiencing are normal. You are alone in a completely unknown world, it is normal to feel confused and lonely at first, it is okay to feel down sometimes and it is okay to miss home. Do not blame yourself for having those feelings; understand they are temporary and you will feel comfortable once you have some time to get used to your new situation. You should be aware that you are not the only one feeling this way. Expressing your emotions by opening up to somebody, or even writing in a journal if you feel more comfortable can be very helpful. In the second and more important place, you have to change your mindset. The best way to do so is implementing an Appraisal-focused constructive coping strategy. An Appraisal-focused strategy consists of controlling our belief system when facing an activating event in order to achieve desirable consequences (Weiten et al., 2012). Remember this sentence “You feel the way you think”. If you approach your entire experience abroad as an amazing opportunity to get to know interesting people, places, learn new values and norms and develop yourself as a person, you will. The mind is powerful. Keeping a positive mindset is vital to enrich from an experience abroad, as well as it is in all fields of life. Substituting catastrophic thinking by humor will also be very helpful. Culture shock usually leads to embarrassing
- 8. situations but there is nothing wrong with that, especially if you have a foreign friend with whom you can laugh about them. Combining these two strategies is a key for you to make the most of your experience abroad. Depending on your personality it will be easier or harder. For example, Gullahorn and Gullahorn (1963) noted that sojourners with more firmly established perception of themselves suffer less. Reverse cultural shock As mentioned in the topic description, the main stresses that cultural shock presents are disorientation, stress, value confusion, anger, hostility, academic problems and social withdrawal. Children and adolescents tend to experience greater severity of reverse culture shock than adults (K.F Gaw, 2000, p. 85). In fact, I can corroborate these statements with my own experience. At the age of 16 I went to Ireland to Study for one year. Although I have also suffered some reverse culture shock after later experiences abroad, they have never been as strong as it was on that first time as teenager. I had great difficulties to keep up with school and suffered a huge cognitive dissonance or value confusion that took me more than one year to overcome. However, it is also when you get home that you realize how much you have developed. You become aware that some of your current personal values are those from the different people who have walked through your life and get the feeling that part of the person you are is actually spread over different continents. The result is that when you are back at home, it does not feel exactly the same anymore. You feel confused because you do not get the feeling of full security and comfort that you expected. But in most cases, home is exactly the same and it is you who has irremediably changed. While your friends and family continued their routines you were bombed with a ton of new emotions, feelings, perspectives and ideas that made you grow a lot in a short period of time. You start to value more your family and realize that you got used to living surrounded by certain behaviors, values, and attitudes that are now are missing. An Emotional focus constructive coping strategy can be very helpful to face these matters. In this situation it is very important to identify and separate feelings. For example, you might not feel exactly the same way about your friends but it does not
- 9. mean you do not love them anymore. You still do, but you have discovered that there are values your friends lack which are also important to you. You have to make an effort to love the different things in your life for what they are and be thankful. You have been very fortunate for you experience abroad and now it is the time to relax and enjoy the little things of your daily life. Spend lots of time with your family, they deserve it and whether you believe it or not, it will make you feel much better. Another suggestion is keeping yourself busy. The fact that you are back does not imply that your life cannot be exciting anymore. Joining interesting courses, practicing sports, making plans for the weekend or going out in different places are some examples of activities that can provide you with the feeling of excitement you are missing. Apply what you have learnt. Whether by helping a friend with the foreign language you have learnt or by talking friends and family about your interesting findings, continuing to apply your knew knowledge will make you feel good. It will somehow remind you that that part of you is still alive. Finally, it will also be helpful to speak with somebody who has gone through a similar experience and with whom you can feel identified. It is always good to speak with somebody who can really understand what you are talking about. It will give you both a feeling of comfort and relief. Summary A sojourner experience is a wonderful chance of travelling, learning a language, getting to know new people, new places and a new culture. But above all, it is a great opportunity to learn from diversity and grow. How beneficial the experience is will depend almost entirely on the personality and willingness of the student and his ability to face the multiple challenges the situation presents: initial loneliness, cultural shock and reverse cultural shock. Emotional Focused and Appraisal Focused constructive coping strategies will be powerful tools to come out well from such challenges. To conclude, I will quote a statement of Adler (1975), who said: “Although culture shock is most often associated with negative consequences, it can be an important aspect of cultural learning, self-development, and personal growth. The problems and frustrations encountered in the culture shock process are important to an
- 10. understanding of change and movement experiences, and that such transitional experiences can be the source of higher levels of personality development. Implicit in the conflict and tension posed by the transitional experience lays the potential for authentic growth and development” (p. 15)
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