It’s that time of year again: abroad season. The season when juniors leave the country, sophomores watch their junior friends leave the country, and seniors come back to campus. I’m part of that last group. I just spent my entire junior year studying in England through the Exeter program. My feelings about the program seem to also be most people’s feelings so I won’t bore you with them beyond saying this: it was wonderful and amazing and I had some fantastic experiences. But being away for a whole year is definitely not a decision to take lightly.
People talk about going abroad and being abroad all the time, but no one really talks about coming back. So let this be your guide to the emotional rollercoaster that is returning to Kenyon and the good ol’ US of A.
The Good
The first week back home is like a breath of fresh air. No one thinks your accent is funny! Everything is normal size! You might not think that matters but it totally does. Everything is smaller in Europe: the streets, the cars, the bathrooms…everything. When you come back, it feels like you finally have room to stretch your legs. When you go to the store you recognize all the brands (they’re all normal size, too). And you can DRIVE to the store in a CAR. As a matter of fact, you can drive everywhere because this is America, dangit. No more walking miles to buy groceries, no more walking to buy clothes, no more walking to restaurants, no more walking to movies and most importantly no more walking all the way back hauling everything you bought. You feel more and more American by the day.
The first week of Kenyon feels the same. If you didn’t feel at home before, you do now. You’re back with all your friends, enjoying the perks of being a senior (NCA life is great, guys), and (most importantly) you’re eating at Peirce again. No matter how much you grumbled about Peirce before you left, you will miss it while abroad. That is a guarantee. Whether it’s after a very sad and mostly burnt attempt at cooking on your own or after the umpteenth dinner of mayonnaise and cabbage your host family feeds you, you will find yourself thinking “God, I miss Peirce.” You slide easily right back into your Kenyon life and schedule. It’s like you never left.
The Bad
Except you definitely did leave. Slowly, you realize this is not the Kenyon you knew as a sophomore. You know the movies where the main character gets transported into a parallel universe where everything is mostly the same, but just a little different? That’s exactly how week two feels. You become the protagonist in a sci/fi movie, waving your arms and shouting “guys printing is totally different!” or “the computers in Gund Commons disappeared!” to your friends who totally forgot that any of this changed.
Then, you start having actual assignments and you realize that you don’t really remember how to do this. You wrote papers in England, but what do Kenyon professors want? You can’t really remember. When you finally figure it out, you try to print, but the formatting is way off. You’re stumped until you realize that you’ve still got word set to write on A4 paper (because paper is a different size in England). And then, after all of that, you notice you’ve spelled color with a “u” because your language was still set to UK English. It’s fine. You’re fine.
The Meh
The next generation of Kenyon students goes abroad and your Facebook feed is flooded with people you may never see again exploring places you’ve been. Half of you says “aww I want to go back. I miss clotted cream and scones and cider!”
While the other half says “but I am so happy to be back at Kenyon. I don’t need to go back to Europe for some time.” It’s confusing.
The good and the bad blend pretty well after week two, making week three a giant pile of meh. You remember how to do assignments and your computer has all of the right settings on it, but there are still jokes you don’t understand and you still find weird things that have changed.
But on the whole, things are looking up.
Image Credit: Stay Tooned, Buzzfeed, Pinmig, Tumblr, Bushraga Lil Blog