About 60 percent of Middlebury students study abroad during their junior year. While most of these students spend only a semester in a different country, a sizeable amount is away for the entire year. The study abroad experience is formative, and students who spent considerable time away from the college often return as very different people.
Joyce Ma ’11 spent her junior year in Bordeaux, France and found that the changes she experienced while abroad have dramatically affected her outlook on college life.
“Being abroad crystallized for me what’s important in my life, so I don’t care as much about the petty day-to-day circumstances. I’ve distanced myself from the Middlebury college student mentality,” she said. “I feel less expectant of Middlebury social life; I’ve accepted that the Middlebury social scene is disappointing.”
Commenting on the changes she saw in herself after spending this past year in Madrid, Spain, Caitlin Kellough ’11 said, “I think I became more independent, and I discovered some new passions.”
The issue of independence makes evident one of the great discrepancies between Middlebury’s campus life and the life that all seniors will shortly be facing. Johanna Interian ’11 who spent the year in Mainz, Germany said that her readjustment has been taxing.
“I loved living on my own and getting on a bus or train and being able to see something new any day,” she said. “At Middlebury, everything is essentially how I remember it, and it’s nearly impossible to regularly escape the campus or the routine.”
Multiple seniors commented on how strange it feels to once again be living in a closely contained dorm setting.
Luke Eastman ’11 spent his spring semester in La Serena, Chile.
“It’s the complete opposite of where I was [at Middlebury]. No one in Chile lives in dorms,” Eastman said. “They live with their families or will rent out a house together.”
While it can be assumed that having certain luxuries (like unlimited food) might make life back on campus seem easier, Kellough found the opposite to be true.
“I guess it’s just hard to go from living on my own to go back to living in a dorm. It’s just a very different experience,” she said. “I miss my independence.”
Chris Hench ’11 also faced the daunting possibility of dorm life upon his return from Germany, but he chose to spend his senior year in the German House. This decision was directly related to Hench's year abroad.
“I wanted to continue speaking German, and I didn’t want to lose the skills that I had developed in Mainz from constantly speaking the language,” said Hench. “I also didn’t want to live in a dorm. That was very important to my decision. I didn’t want to be directly in the middle of campus, where it’s chaos all the time.”
Pre-departure meetings for students going abroad warned that transitioning to this new and independent lifestyle, coupled with the overwhelming sense of living in a foreign culture, would cause significant culture shock. Abe Katz ’11, who spent his year in Egypt, found his life abroad to be “a constant exercise in living outside one’s comfort zone, at least until that comfort zone expands.”
“I grew used to operating under a sort of incessant pressure, either linguistic or cultural,” said Katz. “it’s surprising how little culture shock I’ve experienced back at Middlebury.”
However, other students who had been abroad found that the real culture shock hit not when they returned to the States, but when they returned to Middlebury. While Michelle Fechtor ’11 potentially faced a double culture shock, as she divided her junior year between Hongzhou, China, and Paris, France, she felt more overwhelmed by her return to the College campus.
“It’s really weird being the oldest now,” said Fechtor. “When I left, I knew all of the faces even if I didn’t know everyone’s name. Now there are two whole classes that have come in that I haven’t ever seen before. At least everything was familiar before.”
The reverse culture shock of being back at Middlebury was not unique to Fechtor. Eastman also noted how difficult this readjustment has been.
“The concept of time is more flexible [in Chile]. You can arrive late to class and it’s okay because the professor will be late too.”
While time abroad changed student perceptions of the campus, the College was undergoing some unexpected changes of its own.
“The traffic flow is terrible because of that new bridge construction,” said Hench. “There’s also a massive speed bump outside of McCullough that I floored my car on.”
Kellough also found the school to feel very different.
“I feel like there’s a newer mix of people; a different type of student,” Kellough said.
For Eastman, external changes to the campus were less jarring than the changes he incurred. “Middlebury is the same, but my perspective of it has changed.”
While the independence acquired abroad can make returning to Middlebury strange and sometimes difficult, all of these students (many of the seniors) have brought back experiences that will help carry them into the real world after their time at Middlebury is over.
Students find return from abroad bittersweet
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