Will I Have “Culture Shock?”

Yes. Whether they want to admit it or not, anyone who moves to a place where people’s language, behavior, ideas, and ways of thinking are different will experience some degree of “culture shock.”

Culture shock can be understood as a set of feelings a person has when faced with a very new living situation. The feelings include:

• excitement and stimulation
• confusion
• tiredness (sometimes made worse by difficulty sleeping)
• homesickness
• depression (low energy, lack of motivation to do anything)
• anger and hostility toward the local people
• anxiety and sometimes paranoia
• questioning whether they have made a mistake in going to the new country
  

A New Student’s Responses
“ The first two weeks were a kind of a honeymoon….MORE

Some new students are more affected by these feelings than others. The feelings last longer for some people than for others. Some people feel reasonably comfortable in their new setting within a few weeks; for most people the period is longer—several months, or a year or more.

Culture shock can also set in or recur after someone has been in a new place for a period of time, even years after arrival. For example, someone might realize after a long time in the new place that an assumption they had been making about the local people was not correct. They then need to reinterpret things they previously thought they understood.

Culture shock is not necessarily a bad thing. It can make you more alert and inquisitive, and give you motivation to learn more about the place you are now living. It can encourage you to look for new ways of thinking and acting, so you have a better chance of getting what you want. It can make you a more flexible person. Culture shock is not an illness that requires medical treatment. Normally, it passes with time. (A student experiencing a prolonged period of depression, though, should visit a foreign student adviser or a mental-health counselor.)

Many Chinese students report having “reverse culture shock” when they return to their country. Perhaps without realizing it, they have changed in important ways while in the United States. In addition, things at home may have changed too. The result is that returning students have to readjust to their own culture and society.

“You’ve Been Away Twice as Long as You’ve Been Gone”
A good way to think about “reverse culture shock…MORE