Culture Shock Doesn’t Have to Be Crippling
Whether leaving for college or moving abroad, it’s all about how you adjust
My first experience with culture shock happened when I moved out of my mom’s house and went to college. I grew up in a small town in Northern Michigan. Everyone knew everyone’s business. If they didn’t know you, they knew your relatives. And you could tell when it was hunting season when Home Depot told you how many deer could fit in a chest freezer.
It’s hard to go anywhere if no one around you had a car. We had a mini-bus, but at the time, the service wasn’t great.
College wasn’t like that at all. It felt nice introducing myself and not hearing, “Oh, you’re (relative’s name)’s (relative)!” afterward. Nobody treated rifle season like a holiday, and the metro bus was reliable and convenient. I could use the bus for free at my school as long as I showed my ID.
It took me a while to get used to introducing myself without people saying they knew my relatives. After the first week, I was the most outgoing I’d been in a long time. I still keep in contact with some of my old friends and roommates to this day.
When you move to a new city, state, or country, everyone warns you about culture shock. No matter how much you know about a place, how much you…
