Extent of Change in You

If your exchange year has been a success, you have changed in ways that you probably cannot describe, or completely understand yet. You have become a skilled world traveler. You are a skilled bicultural person. You can actually get along quite well, not just be a tourist, in another culture. You have learned to think of things differently by looking at the world from someone else’s point of view long enough to really understand it. In a sense, you have become a citizen of the world, so it may be more than a little confusing to think of where “home” is. Some of these things will probably happen to you. You will find yourself thinking or dreaming in your new language. You will try to explain something to someone back home and not be able to give a precise translation of what you are talking about. You will talk to your parents about one of your host parents, calling the host parent “mom” or “dad”. You will think your hometown is very small, or that your friends think in “small” ways. 

So don’t be too surprised if your family and friends seem a bit uncomfortable with you. They probably will be, because you won’t be the same person who left them a year ago. Don’t underestimate how much you have changed and how strange you may seem to those who knew you before. You may be very proud of your independence, self‑confidence and internationalism. But they may see you as self‑absorbed, critical of everything and not interested in fitting in. 

Remember that those around you may have changed as well, if not in the same ways you have. If you are expecting things to be the same, you will have more of a shock than if you are looking for changes. Your friends have had a year of growing and maturing, and your family situation may have changed (deaths, divorces, moves, job changes). You missed some important events in their lives, just as they missed some important ones in yours. Even those things that haven’t really changed may seem quite different, because you see them differently. Though you may love your native country more than ever, you are also much more likely to be critical of it, and question common cultural practices that you took for granted before you left.