Homesickness Case Study

With the high school graduation coming up, and the end of the school year approaching; most students, at least the most fortunate are all dreaming of foreign countries. The education system is so poor in third world countries like mine that most of the time the only option for parents have is, to ship off their freshly graduate son or daughter to a foreign land. Researches start, parents and children look for school, countries, study budgets options. They fill the paperwork, demand references to their professors, and complete any requirements they need to. The targets are usually France, Canada, United States, England, some choose odd places like china, Singapore and even Russia. Then the results come in, the letters of acceptance

317 out of 1000, 32 percent exactly had experienced homesickness, on the other hand 75 percent of them have suffered from any kind of stress. A student said "I didn 't deal with homesickness particularly well and ended up wasting a good bit of my first year being unhappy, instead of taking advantage of the many opportunities university afforded me.” (Sanzagiri) They also discovered that most of the students affected by the problem are mostly in their first year of college. Which makes a lot of sense, since only then they are not completely used to their new lifestyle. They have to endure this problem usually by themselves, and according to the counseling center at Southern Polytechnic State University it is mostly due to the culture shock. The culture shock is an incident that happens to the international student when they arrive in a different country. They live differently, and are subject to major changes. They then take part on a difficult journey punctuated by four phases: Honeymoon, where the student arrives, there is nothing wrong with life and everything is amazing. Shockingly, things starts to feel odd, different. Dealing with things seems to be a lot harder than in the past. Then the negotiation phase where they start to feel better, and where they learn how deal with their issues and integrate society. And finally the acceptance phase, where they are completely integrated, and when living matters are not related to homesickness.

I had the chance to sit down with a fellow student, he comes from the same country as me but came months before me. He explained his experience, and transition from both countries. I needed to know what were the factors that led him to this, and how did he cope with