Most people probably see me as that typical study abroad girl — the one who left for four months only to return home gushing about how it changed her life. Well, I’ll own it — studying abroad changed my life.
This story is quite common among those who go abroad. On top of cool field trips, unique classes, weekend trips that feel like mini vacations and good food, there’s just something about study abroad that makes the whole experience rich, impactful and long-lasting. Study abroad has a secret, and it takes more than personal reflection to discover what it is.
Think about the structure of study abroad. The whole experience consists of distinct stages named pre-departure, in-country and reentry. This structure marches students through preparation and anticipation beforehand, exhilaration while abroad and a mixture of relief and sorrow when it all must come to an end. However, the day a student returns home is not truly the end of their study abroad experience. It’s when interaction with the secret begins.
It’s simple to understand why many students don’t know this secret. The excitement that comes with preparing for life abroad and the bliss that often accompanies time away tend to occupy the majority of a study abroad student’s headspace, so much so that when students come home, the weeks or months abroad fall peacefully into the good memories category; there they lie until something comes around to unearth them.
Beneath those memories — good and bad — lives the secret. More than cool stories and a resume-booster, study abroad presents the opportunity for an intense, rewarding and commonly difficult restructuring of how to view the world and everything in it. While this process can start abroad, it’s during the transition back to life at home that growth really takes place. The secret has a name — integration.
Integration can be understood as the complete meshing of a few things: a student’s self-perception before going abroad, the entirety of time spent abroad and the life a student lives after returning home. What makes integration a little-known secret is the difficulty students often encounter in assimilating pre-study abroad life into post-study abroad life. It’s hard to know how to think about what just happened; it’s hard to see the experience for all that it was. The proximity of students to their lives abroad makes it challenging to separate and gain enough distance from the experience to learn from it.
Nevertheless, the struggle is worth it. Take my case, for example. I loved being abroad and no part of me wanted to come home. I remember distinctly thinking that re-entry would smack me in the face. I expected to find difficulty facing reality and attempting to squeeze my changed life into the old one I left behind four months prior, and I was right. Like everyone else, I flew home and momentarily enjoyed Christmas break. Shortly after this time of happiness in once again enjoying what I miraculously still liked about America, I encountered the secret. And wow did it take some unearthing.
As I trudged through memories, shifted perspectives, newfound interests, adopted values and conviction of misconceptions, I began to reconstruct everything. I walked away seeing myself differently. I understood God differently. I thought about my country and how the world views it differently. I reconsidered some life goals of mine. My experience abroad reframed how I viewed my education. I no longer viewed my life from an exclusively American perspective, as I had been liberated and released to a place that provided an external view. The impact of that mindset shift is nearly indescribable. That was three years ago, and I’m still walking with the secret, still unearthing its contents and lessons.
In a time when truth seems arbitrary, when globalization is, well, taking over the world, when a pandemic has knocked us all to our knees, one of the best things we can do is get outside. I don’t mean take a walk around the block, although fresh air is always nice. I mean get outside in such a way that leads to a total perspective shift. It’s scary to see the world from someone else’s point of view, but it might just be the thing we need to make this world a better place. Integration is no walk in the park, and it shouldn’t be. No surface-level restructuring will lead to deep impact. The secret demands commitment, engagement and attention. But the reward is more than worth it.
If you’re wondering how you might integrate an experience into the life you’re living today, start by taking a hard look at what you observed when you stood outside. Think critically about it. Then think critically about how you think critically. You may encounter confusion, deep questioning, discomfort or disappointment. Intensely challenging perception, translation and reaction is vital to the process of integration. Take care to not limit your mind in exploring what you may learn along the way. With each passing day comes a slightly different way to view the world as your brain ingests more and more information.
Integration is not a once and done, check-it-off-the-list type of accomplishment. Integration invites us to see the world as others see it so that we may approach challenges, issues and opportunities in a well-informed, unselfish manner. Study abroad tends to jump start integration with its precious, detached, external view of self. But the reality is that we can encounter the secret anywhere that requires us to step outside our comfort zone. This idea of integration can be applied to a trip outside our hometown or state. The path to integration includes a complete mindset renovation — one that takes past perceptions and new experiences and sifts them into life after venturing outside. Integration results in a renovated thought process that frames how we currently understand the world in light of our experience. Try this out sometime; it might just change your life.
