When I met another Chinese girl the other day, she told me that she doesn’t like to FaceTime with her parents because she would cry. As international students, studying abroad means not only trying to fit into another or several other different culture, but also being away from our homes and relatives.
Students studying abroad at Loyola University’s Rome Center during the 2004 fall semester and the 2007 spring semester completed surveys, which examined aspects of psychological distress, loneliness, and functioning while abroad. “These studies found that students experiencing more psychological distress and more loneliness demonstrated lower levels of functioning while studying abroad and this relationship was found at different time points in the semester.” It’s normal that when people are down or depressed, they don’t feel like working and are hard to concentrate. My advice is that students should not be hesitated to seek help– at Penn State, there are friendly people in the health center willing to address our psychological distress and other mental problems, also, some organizations are meant to gather lonely international students together and talk about the issues.
When having friends to talk and hang out with, we seem to be more cheerful and less depressed, so I’m curious whether increase of friendship networks or social connections can help international students feel better. A correlational study includes Eighty four international students completing a survey examining the relationship between friendship networks, social connectedness, homesickness, contentment, and satisfaction. Researchers found that “international students with a higher ratio of individuals from the host country in their network claimed to be more satisfied, content, and less homesick. Furthermore, participants who reported more friendship variability with host country individuals described themselves as more satisfied, content, and more socially connected.” In other words, especially students who make friends with people from different countries gain more satisfaction and content. Why is it this way? I think the reason is that due to language barriers, cultural differences, etc, it’s more difficult for students to connect with or make friends with people from other countries. However, once we really fit in and get along well with individuals from different countries, we will feel more involved into the environment we are in and don’t recognize it as merely a remote place to study, but a warm second home with people we can reach to and groups we belong with. Plus, if people completed some difficult tasks or went beyond what we thought ourselves could do, we would feel more satisfied and content.
(Trend of studying abroad)
Since the trend of studying abroad gradually increases and a lot of American students are considering studying abroad to broaden views or gain more experiences, I believe this blog can give you some heads up and advice of having a nice mental status in order to function well in studies. As my blog is closely related to psychology, you may ask if it has something to do with science. To address such concerns, I found an abstract of a book illustrating psychology as “the science of mind and behavior.” 🙂
I found this blog extremely interesting because I am definitely a student who is looking at going abroad. I would completely agree that going abroad is not for everyone. I had friends from high school who were worried about going to college 2-3 hours away from home, and I do not think they would do well going away from their friends. Personally I think I would do just fine going abroad because I am 8 hours away from home (which sometimes feels like I am abroad). It would be interesting to see an experiment done that sent a random group of students abroad and then measure their responses to be abroad. That way we could have definite proof on the reactions people have to going abroad.
Personally, I believe it takes a certain type of person to be able to leave home and the place they are used to living in to study abroad. I beleive that if you adjusted well to college and being on your own in general, studying abroad would probably be easier for you. With that being said, any new situation can be tough on a person and you never really know how you are going to react or feel about the new place you are in. Personally, I would like to study abroad at some point in my college career, as I believe it adds a lot of perspective to your life. This is a great post for someone who is unsure of what they want to do though. Thanks!
I would have to agree that studying abroad is the move for most people looking to expand their horizons. Studying abroad allows you to see and experiment with things that you may not be exposed to at home. Just like making the decision to go to college, I believe that in any new situation, there is plenty of positive things to add into one’s perspective life. Righteously, studying abroad clearly can diversify one’s perspective, while also inducing a sense of self security based on gained knowledge of the world. Thus, I would also have to conclude that studying abroad is a proactive outlet of choice.