If you’ve ever studied abroad during your college (or even high school) education, you’re very familiar with a several things: packing regrets, misadventures, unforgettable memories, weird food, language barriers, public transportation, jet lag, a thousand photos, a lot of souvenirs and a sad longing for a place you briefly called home.
Whether you studied abroad for a week, a month or an academic year, you probably had the time of your life. Like all great things, it eventually came to an end, and you had to pack up the bags you’d been living out of and come home. This is when the real slump hits: when people stop caring about your trip and all you want to do is go back.
When you first come home, everyone is so excited for you — they want to hear all about it, they want to see all your pictures, and you get to talk for hours about the amazing things you saw, all the fun you had and the things you learned. Inevitably, your friends and family will stop asking questions about your trip, and each time you talk about it, you notice everyone gradually losing interest.
It’s totally fair, and you know that they are thinking, “OK, you studied abroad and you had a sick time, we get it.” You can’t really blame them. However it’s still disheartening to finally have to file away your memories and continue on with life back home. Immediately you start to miss a lot of things: riding trains, practicing another language, enjoying a certain food everyday, seeing beautiful landscapes, castles, cities, etc.
So what can you do when life slows back down to normal again? Well, there’s a lot of ways to cope with post study abroad transgressions. I was lucky enough to form close friendships with the group of students that I went abroad with. The great thing about this is that we still had each other when we came home. We know we will always have each other to talk to about our time abroad because we were right alongside each other the whole time.
Student organizations are another great way to keep in touch with your travel experiences. For example, I became a study abroad ambassador when I came home. Now I get to talk to other people about their study abroad plans and help make them a reality. I also, with the help of one of my fellow study abroad travelers, revived German club so we could keep alive the spirit we experienced in Germany.
The single best cure, however, for post study abroad blues, is to plan your next trip. Whether you travel abroad again for school, or take a two-week trip with some friends, don’t think your opportunities to travel and engage with other cultures are over just because your trip ended.
I went to Germany with five other students. Since then, one of them has been there this whole semester, studying abroad again, and another has an internship in Germany this summer. Once you’ve left, you’ll be dying to return as soon as you come home.
There is a phrase about Heidelberg, a city in Germany, that goes, “Ich hab’ mein Herz in Heidelberg verloren,” which means, “I lost my heart in Heidelberg.” It’s a beautiful phrase that captures the spirit of travel. No matter where you go, a piece of you will stay behind, and your experiences will become part of who you are. So when you’re craving your favorite dish from a far away place, and missing the people you met and the things you did, just know so many other students feel the same way. Know that it is only temporary, because someday you know you’ll return, and it will feel like going home, because part of you never left.
