Why studying and working abroad is like an emotional roller coaster — The 5 phases you experience during your exchange semester

New scents, exciting impressions, good food, sunny weather. Feelings of loneliness, homesickness, unfamiliar territory. These are the contrasts you can encounter during a longer stay abroad. Sometimes things don’t go as you expected — you’re down on the roller coaster of emotions. Sometimes you experience so many overwhelming things — you are on the loop of the roller coaster.

As early as 1960, the American anthropologist Kalvero Oberg described different phases that he noticed in students doing an exchange semester. Depending on how long your stay lasts, you will experience all the phases. Depending on where you spend your stay abroad, you will experience the different phases more intensively.

What is typical for these phases and what is important for you in each phase?

1. Butterflies and tingling feelings in your stomach — like a loop on a roller coaster.

Your journey, your trip begins. You have pictures of your stay in your head that can now be realized. Your most beloved people have just said goodbye to you and given you their best wishes. In the new country, everything is exciting and new. You can discover everything. You suddenly have freedoms you don’t have at home. Oberg refers to the honeymoon phase.

What is important for you:

1. Give yourself time to explore. Remember — you are on holiday in this place for longer than 2 weeks. You don’t have to see and explore everything in the same day.
2. All the new experiences, people, and places consume energy. Find oases of relaxation.
3. For a few months, you start your life in a completely new place. Your friends are far away. Your family is not there. Your favorite milk / favorite breakfast cereal / favorite… you have to find it first. All these small & big things that you have built up over the years in your home place, you have to find here bit by bit.

Self-taken picture

2. ZaaBum. The daily life starts — the roller coaster rides into a milder realm after the loop.

Get up at 7 am, take the metro or bus, find your way, and introduce yourself to new people at school or work. Maybe you also have to prove yourself in the new place. The people in the new country are great, but maybe they work a little differently than you and what you are used to at home? With a foreign language, you might have some communication problems? Or maybe you can’t express all the ideas you have in your head because you don’t have a perfect mastery of the language yet? In the evening you are tired of all the new information and experiences. Do you want to have a quick bite to eat or do you want to discover a new neighborhood? At the same time, you notice certain less pleasant things or events in the country that are more difficult for you to understand. These are all questions and issues that you may encounter in this second phase. Oberg terms this time the rejection phase.

What is important for you:

1. Write down — Write down everything that is on your mind, what is bothering you, what you have experienced. This usually helps to bring some order into your thoughts.
2. In addition to all the new things, start a certain routine. Join a sports club or yoga club, always get up around your favorite time, have a morning or evening ritual, etc.
3. Give yourself time if you might not be able to do everything the same way at first as you can at home.

3. Retreat. Rest. You miss the habits and people of home — the roller coaster takes a break.

After everything was new and exciting, you now also notice details that are unfamiliar to you. Families may have a different way of dealing with each other. Gender roles may be different. You may be tired of all the new experiences and people. You want to see something or someone you already know.

What is important for you?

1. Give yourself the rest you need. Think about what you do at home that is good for you. Build in a weekend where you stay home and don’t dive into new experiences again.
2. Accept that after this time in the new country, you don’t have to understand everything about the new culture.
3. Even if you love this new place or like it very much. You grew up in a different culture and you may miss things from your home place.

Oberg calls it the regression phase, although I personally don’t find this term very appropriate.

4. Slowly adjusting to the local people — coupled with some homesickness & things you can’t get used to. You live your “new” life — the roller coaster starts again.

The initial phase is over. The longest part of your stay follows. You gradually begin to lead a “normal” life. You no longer experience new things every day, you have slowly built up a certain routine. You have not yet built up deep friendships, but you have found some new people with whom you get along and with whom you like to do things.

At home, you no longer constantly send new photos and reports from your new place. But at the same time, some days you feel homesick. Homesick to see your favorite people or your favorite place. It is also typical for this phase that you realize that you have not become a completely different person just because you are far away. Certain topics from home come to mind, some mental patterns emerge here as well, and your weaknesses and strengths also come to the fore in the new place.

In your new place, you notice some things that you may not understand because of a different culture or different norms. On the other hand, you begin to adopt and live certain customs, language patterns and ideas of the new culture. Oberg calls it accommodation.

What is important for you?

1. Be gentle with yourself. Accept your weaknesses and learn to deal with them.
2. Think about what you are most looking forward to from home. Make a list of these items (you will find the reason later).
3. Enjoy the familiarity of the new place. You have already had so many new experiences and learned so many new things that this life is already a habit…WoW.
4. Write a letter to yourself with all the points you have learned, the habits you want to keep at home, and the ideas you have built up during your time abroad. Send this letter to your home to read after a few weeks.

Self-taken picture

5. At home, not everything is the same as before. Not only you but also those around you have grown and moved on — the roller coaster is over and you can get on a new ride.

You are back! You are greeted by your beloved people. You can spend time with the people you missed. You see the old familiar things (beautiful and not so beautiful) again. You are fresh and full of ideas from all your experiences. At the same time, you miss the life and culture abroad. Maybe you also miss the habits you have built up there. You may even notice, after the initial euphoria, that the people around you have also changed and moved on.

Oberg calls it the return culture shock. You have to go through the 4 phases again in your home country — although to a lesser extent because you get used to it again much more quickly.

What is important for you?

1. Take out your list from phase 3 with the items you were looking forward to. Now think about what you are super grateful to have back.
2. Process your impressions. Sort your photos and show them to your family or friends. Give away the gifts you brought with you.
3. Think about what you want to integrate from your time abroad and the lessons you learned into your everyday life at home.
4. Turn your ideas into reality.
5. Stay in touch with the people you met abroad.
6. Give yourself time to get reacquainted with your favorite people. Especially if you’re in a romantic relationship and you’ve been abroad alone, it takes some time to find a common rhythm again.

Depending on where you spent your stay abroad, or how different the culture was, you will experience the 5 phases more intensively. Also, you only experience all phases if you were on the road for a longer period of time.

What were your experiences with these 5 phases? Write it in the comments.