Maureen Wolff  |  Contributing Writer

At the start of a new semester, the predictable stereotypes of study-abroad returners manifest themselves all over campus. For High Sierra, it’s the hammocks and the bare feet. For South Africa, it’s the talk of safaris and bungee jumping.

APU students have the opportunity to embark on adventures around the world, from Ecuador to Oxford and beyond. But what does it look like to return from these faraway places and readjust into the Azusa community?

The assistant director of student development and operations in the Center for Global Learning and Engagement, Erin Thorp, explains that students often have a tendency to compare the characteristics of their location of study with those of home.

“If they’ve grown accustomed to a certain kind of community, and then now they’re transitioning to being back without that, then that’s usually where their struggle lies,” Thorp says.

A 2010 study published in the Journal of College Student Development found that students returning from study-abroad programs often experience skepticism toward their home culture and feel as if their courses and workload increase upon return.

Sophomore political science major Ary Petrosky explains that her re-entry into Azusa Pacific’s campus community signaled a dramatic change in the pace of life.

“Coming back to campus, everything seems to be moving a million miles per second,” said Petrosky, who studied abroad for two consecutive semesters in High Sierra and Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.

Junior international business major Emmaleigh Carlson, who also studied abroad in Pietermaritzburg last semester, called spring term’s immediate onslaught of homework and syllabi a “rude awakening.”

Upon returning home, study-abroad students may be met with a lack of understanding from the people they left behind. Petrosky has experienced frustration in her re-entry process because many of the people in her life assumed that she would return home unchanged even after two semesters spent away from campus.

“It was a very stark contrast, being in such a loving environment and community where I was fully accepted for who I was, and then all of a sudden to be home and to be a different person, but hanging out with previous friends and with family that didn’t know how to ask the right questions about my experience,” Petrosky said, reflecting on her return from High Sierra in spring 2014. “They just assumed I was the same person, but I wasn’t.”

Carlson maintains that a key part of re-entry is having patience with those who didn’t leave campus. “I think what us study-abroad alumni have to realize is that grace is so important to extend, because it’s really hard to invest in someone else’s experience when you have no context of what it looks like,” she says, adding that students who have not studied abroad have the opportunity to come alongside and learn from those who travelled.

Sophomore international business major Karl Fredrickson recalls a talk given to the spring 2014 Ecuador cohort by Student Life Coordinator Bryan Cole. Cole explains that there are four “Fs” to study abroad. A student experiencing re-entry may become trapped in a cycle of “fun,” “fight” and “flee,” bouncing between periods of happiness and the desire to resist readjustment or deny reality. Only after an individual escapes the cycle can the “fruit” begin to reveal itself.

Fredrickson points specifically to a personal shift in perspective and an ability to use his acquired knowledge in the Spanish language in his workplace last summer.

“When you go through an experience like this and you come back, you start to see things differently for sure,” said Fredrickson, who is now a student development mentor for the Center for Global Learning and Engagement. “Even though it’s a first-world versus second-world dynamic for culture, … there were still a lot of the same issues and the same prejudices and the same sufferings that I see in people at home that I did abroad.”

Thorp explained that the Study Abroad Office seeks to promote connections and communication in order to build a strong support system and meet the needs of individuals at every phase of the re-entry process. Both current study-abroad students and program alumni may be supported by a mentor from the Study Abroad Office’s Student Development Mentor Team, which includes study-abroad alumni from various programs who are available to come alongside peers. “Renew D-Groups” are discipleship groups made available for alumni of all study-abroad experiences, and include cohort-specific groups as well as ones with members from a variety of international trips.

In addition, the Study Abroad Office hosts contests and events to foster a sense of community both for the larger pool of study-abroad returners and individual cohorts.

Despite some ingrained stereotypes attached to study-abroad alumni, each student’s transition back home looks different. Petrosky uses journaling as a means to process her experiences. Carlson believes in the importance of space and the willingness of friends not to place time obligations on returning students, but to simply make themselves available for support.

After experiencing the wonder and adventure of South Africa, Carlson says, she realized that study-abroad students must consider the city of Azusa just as worthy to be explored and considered beautiful as faraway places.

“You need to believe that the commission to come back home is as significant as the commission to go to South Africa,” Carlson said.

As the fall 2014 cohorts return to the rhythm of campus life, they bring far more than suitcases back to Azusa. Returners bear the lessons they have learned and the knowledge that a new phase of the journey —a process of re-entry and readjustment —is just beginning.