Unfamiliar homeland

Students participating in global internships endure culture shock at home

Each May, after the spring semester is over, Global Studies interns return to a United States they cannot recognize. After nearly four months on the other side of the world, students board a plane to venture home and face the reality that home looks radically different. They have experienced culture shock.

“There’s a lot of official definitions of culture shock,” Director of Internships Khesed Dent said. “But really what it is, is the accumulation of all of the changes around you and all of the responses you have.”

This past semester, 28 students made the flight home and felt culture shock. These students lived all around the world, including countries such as Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Uganda, South Africa and others. But after their four-month stay overseas, they came back stateside with a new perspective.

Caitlyn, a senior Global Studies student, completed the majority of her internship in various cities in South Africa including Cape Town, Durbin and Richards Bay. Caitlyn partnered with an organization in efforts to share the gospel with the South African people.

“It sounds bad, but you become bitter toward your own culture for the lack of knowledge that they have of the outside world,” Caitlyn said.

Caitlyn, who has traveled overseas many times, is still adjusting to life back at Liberty University.

Other interns such as Jacob, who spent four months in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal, are also processing their internships. Jacob and the other interns in Nepal were there when the deadly earthquakes struck. Though they all remained safe, the experience effected how they are acclimating to being home.

“By God’s grace I am steadily processing my internship with delight,” Jacob said. “I significantly miss Nepal and think about the country and the people often, but I look forward to grasping the lessons that God taught me through my experience there.”

Dent and Melody Harper, chair of the Global Studies department, co-teach “Trends and Issues in Global Studies: GLST 490” where interns have the opportunity to process their internships together. Students discuss the changes they are going through on a daily basis and the struggles of living in the American culture once again.

Dent described the reentry process into the United States as a four-part process for the interns: honeymoon, rejection, acceptance, and competence.

According to Dent, transitioning back home to the U.S. is difficult because many of the interns do not realize the change they go through. The interns go through a big shift in moving their lives thousands of miles across the globe and by the time they are thriving in the new culture they are uprooted and moved back home.

“You’re trying to find out how to fit your new self into an old place and it’s uncomfortable,” Dent said.

There is not a set amount of time that any of these four stages last and it is different for every person that goes through culture shock, Dent said. Students can support their friends by giving them space to process but making sure they ask how they are doing and by listening to their experiences while overseas.

The Global Studies program offers a minor that come along side other majors and give it a cross-cultural component. Fifteen students with Global Studies minors completed their internships over the summer.

For global studies majors, visit the School of Divinity’s website at liberty.edu/divinity for more information about internships.

For non-global studies majors, to learn more about Center for Global Engagement, educational programs and internships, visit liberty.edu/academics/globalengagement.

Editor’s Note: Names have been changed and organization information has been withheld for security purposes.

PIERCE is a feature reporter.