3s, you may be at a high risk of experiencing severe homesickness.
Risk factors explained
There are many factors that could affect your chances of becoming homesick. These include factors related to your experience, your attitudes, your personality, and your family relationships. Finding out more about these risk factors can help you understand your own vulnerabilities and identify the strategies that are most likely to help you.
Experience
Not surprisingly, your experience of being away from home is an important factor. If you’ve never or rarely been away from home for long periods of time, you’re more likely to feel homesick when you move abroad. Having had bad experiences of being away from home, being in the hospital for example, can also make acute homesickness more likely.
Attitudes
Your attitudes and expectations are also important. If you expect to be very homesick, you’re more likely to be very homesick. Attitudes and expectations tend to be “self-fulfilling” because of the way they influence what you notice and the way you behave. For example, if you don’t expect to make friends, you’re less likely to make friends because you may not notice when people are being friendly toward you. When strangers speak to you, for instance, you might think they are simply giving you information rather than making conversation in order to get to know you.
Personality
People who don’t like to try out new things or dislike feeling out of control are more likely to miss the familiarity of home. The tendency to be well-organized can be an advantage when moving abroad, but if you need to be organized and in control all of the time, you may be at a real disadvantage. If you don’t like the “chaos” of new experiences, you’re more likely to yearn for the familiarity of home. The way you cope with unexpected events is also a significant factor. If you tend to respond to difficulties with helplessness, you’ll probably also want to be where you’re used to being taken care of, that is in your family home.
Family relationships
In order to feel secure and happy abroad, you need to feel you have a secure and happy home to go back to. If your family does not support your decision to go abroad or is very worried about you, you may not have the confidence to go out into the world. If there are difficulties at home that are not being talked about, you’re also much more likely to be preoccupied with home. Finally, if the decision to study abroad has been made for you—by your parents, for instance—or if you have not been fully involved in planning your studies abroad, you’re less likely to make a success of your venture. All of these factors increase the likelihood that you’ll be troubled by homesickness.
Preventing homesickness
There are steps that you can take before you leave home so that you are less likely to suffer homesickness. Taking part in all of the planning and decision making around your study abroad experience can be a major help. Involving friends and family members who are enthusiastic about your journey will also give you the support you need. If possible, try to talk openly about problems among family members or close friends so that you’re not worried about things at home when you’re abroad.
To prepare yourself for greater independence, practice doing small, unfamiliar tasks on your own. If you’ve never cooked a meal for yourself for instance, or washed your own clothes, learn how to do these things. Practice until you feel more confident of your skills. Experiencing yourself as a capable person will give you greater confidence when you’re on your own.
What to do when you feel homesick abroad
Of course there will be times when you do feel homesick. But there’s plenty you can do to help yourself. Forming at least one good trusting relationship in your new country is key. Sometimes, when people have come abroad with very high expectations, they can find it difficult to talk openly about difficulties and disappointments. If family and friends at home are very worried about you, you may feel pressure to tell them only “good news.” Being able to talk to someone about how you really feel can be a great relief.
Taking good care of both your body and mind will help: eat well, keep regular hours, exercise, and take care of your health. When you’re feeling homesick, distract yourself by getting out of your room and doing something active. It can be difficult at first to take care of yourself when what you’re really wanting is someone to take care of you. But once you get started, you’ll soon feel not only better, but more self-confident.
How often should I call home?
Staying in touch with people you’re close to at home is important. However, it should not be the focus of your life abroad. Having a regularly scheduled phone conversation or Skype session is generally preferable to calling whenever you feel homesick. This is because people generally feel more secure when they have a regular routine. Knowing that you’ll have contact with home at a set time each week, for example, can help you feel more stable. Moreover, when it’s not time to call, you’re likely to feel free to pay attention to what’s going on around you in your new home.
A final word on adjusting to a new culture
When we hear the words “a new culture,” we often think of an outward journey, an adventure in a new land. However, after reading this chapter, you may realize that the process of adjusting to a new culture is very much a journey inside of yourself. You’ll meet parts of yourself that may have been hidden or unfamiliar to you. Not only that, as you work through each stage of the process, you’ll open up new territories within yourself: new skills and ways of being. It’s the fruits of this inward journey that you’ll keep and take home with you. You’ll need them as you face your next great challenge: readjusting to the culture you left behind. That, however, is the subject of another chapter!
In this chapter, we’d like to help you to understand the best ways to make friends and to get involved in student life at your college/university. Although studies are very important, it’s also important to remember that college life can be a wonderful opportunity to meet native-speaker students, as well as other international students from every corner of the globe.
Try to make friends with people who don’t speak the same first language as you. This doesn’t necessarily have to be native speakers of English. Being friends with other international students from other parts of the world who don’t speak the same first language as you will mean that you have to speak English to communicate. Although it seems very comfortable and safe to make friends with people of the same nationality as you, you will not improve your English or learn the host culture or learn about other cultures in any deep way. Remember that college/university abroad is about much more than just your degree. You’re also improving your foreign language skills, and learning about a new culture.
