Being an exchange student means to be mentally prepared to spend an academic year far away from your home, leave your whole life behind you and say YES to new adventures. Before starting an exchange year, there will be a whole set of expectations of how a new life in a different country will look. Will it be busy, full of adventures, happy and nostalgic or will it feel like homesickness, being tired and overwhelmed? Actually, it can also be both.
There are usually three stages of emotions which are experienced before, during, or after an exchange year. First is a feeling of excitement. At this stage, exchange students are usually super excited to begin a new chapter in their lives and ride a rollercoaster of various emotions. Second comes disappointment. They expected an American life to be just like in American TV shows just to later find out that things are kind of different than they expected.
However, it’s okay, because after disappointment there is always a healing stage, which is the third and final stage.
After living a few months in a new country, they will get used to it and they will be feeling okay. Of course, different people adapt to new environments in a different period of time; it may take just a week to feel like a home, just like I felt, or it can take a few months to fully feel comfortable.
There are also some challenges exchange students might face during their exchange years. The major challenge can be a language barrier.
After living in an environment where everybody shares the same language, coming to a new country where they have to speak a foreign language 24/7 can be tiring.
Another difficulty might be a feeling of homesickness. Of course, they will see their families again just right after a year, but isn’t it supposed to be difficult to adapt to everything new without your family, who live oceans away from you? That’s the reason why exchange students usually avoid talking to their families too much.
However, despite all the challenges they face during their exchange years, there are a lot of fun activities they enjoy doing.
Firstly, what can be more thrilling than sharing a culture? It’s always interesting to learn something new and share what other people haven’t heard of.
Secondly, they enjoy making new friends and memories, which is always an exciting part of adapting to a new place.
Thirdly, they will finally experience the life they were dreaming of: riding those yellow buses just like in American movies, hanging out with their new friends, going to their first football games, going to homecoming and watching cheerleaders cheering for every football game.
Junior Nikita Rogov is an exchange student from Kyrgyzstan.
“In my opinion, exploring keeps your inner child alive and fills your life with colors just as it was in early childhood,” Rogov said. “I’m certain that I’ll have an amazing exchange year with my new friends here.”
The hardest part of being an exchange student is leaving. After spending an amazing time with people who became so close to them, the devastating part is looking from an airplane window and saying ‘goodbye’ to a place which became a new home. It’s just like returning from ‘HOME’ to ‘Home’.
As an exchange student myself, I can tell how much an exchange year changes a student as a person. I became more mature, independent and flexible. I learnt to value simple things, like being able to speak with someone who speaks the same language as me or being able to talk to my family whenever I want to. (It became almost impossible now due to time difference) However, I do realize that I’m living a life, which I was dreaming of a year ago and that’s incredible. I never thought that I’d reach a star which seemed unreachable.
In my opinion, becoming an exchange student was one of the best decisions of my life.
