Before shipping its students abroad, Georgetown sits them down and shows them a simple graph of a sine curve. The Y-axis is your mental well-being. The X-axis is the amount of time you spend abroad. The initial spike? That’s the excitement of arriving in a new country. And the dip? Well, that sudden plunge into despair is culture shock. But the University urges us to bowl through this descent into listless ennui: the shocked will eventually pull through to a pleasant engagement with the local culture.
But fret not, future travelers, I have good news: culture shock is not real, despite what the anthropological research and fancy graphs tell you. For starters, you could basically apply that sine curve (this is already more math than I’ve done in the last three years) to any point in your non-abroad life and make the same point; sometimes you’re in a good mood, and sometimes you’re not.
The idea behind culture shock is that a foreigner implanted in another culture loses their frame of reference, and ability to communicate or achieve basic goals after the novelty wears off. This hypothetical foreigner then experiences frustration and anxiety, followed by a backlash against the culture they are immersed in. But Georgetown and other institutions promoting CS awareness promise that our foreigner will eventually integrate themselves into the culture. (Doesn’t it sound scarier when you call it CS?) Further, upon your return, you are expected to have reverse CS.
The problem with this reasoning is the expectation that our traveler will be totally ignorant of whatever place they are going to, as if they would expect to leave the United States and find things the same everywhere. Most children are capable of understanding that different things are in different places.
Admittedly, with globalization things are pretty similar if you stick to cities (look, cars! McDonalds!) but the differences are acute. In Cairo, besides the language barrier, the easily shocked are confronted by insane traffic, fasting during Ramadan, the open-air markets, the pollution, the smoking, the veiled girls and bearded guys, the haggling, the call to prayer, the absence of hygiene and the anti-U.S. political environment. But strangely, the Americans I know in Cairo have yet to collapse into frustrated hatred of Egyptian culture. Mostly, if we’re annoyed, we make jokes about how the “honeymoon period” has ended and move on.
Why might that be? Perhaps, because most of us spoke a little Arabic before coming (though I know folks who didn’t), or because our Egyptian friends are at heart, international. Maybe because we were told to expect CS we weren’t victimized by it.
But the real reason might be that, like most people, we’ve learned to adapt to frustration. You don’t have to go abroad to have trouble communicating; just start writing for the Hoya. If you’re easily shocked by a lack of hygiene, don’t visit New South on a Saturday morning. Georgetown assumed we’d be reduced to blubbering messes by the hardships of a different culture, but after handling OIP bureaucracy, dealing with the fractured tangle of Egyptian administration is a breeze.
Of course, given the acceptance of CS as a real thing, I propose the University eliminate the double standard between domestic and international culture shock. From now on, new student orientation should feature the dreaded CS sin curve so student leaders can explain that, while Georgetown might be fun at first, right around mid-terms your inability to understand or communicate during college social situations will lead to extreme frustration. It’s perfectly normal.
If anything, the similarities abroad are more shocking than the differences. The other day I shared an iftaar, the evening meal at the end of each day’s Ramadan fast, with some Egyptian friends who were involved in student government.
“No one cares about student council anymore,” Riham said. “It’s just a popularity contest so people can get jobs when they graduate.”
“Well, the President is trying to improve the system,” Donia, a Student Union committee chair, said. “We’re having a new election to increase the size of the council and make it more representative; soon they will actually do something.”
They turned and looked to me, expecting an insight from the American.
“So, uh, you guys know Twister, right.”
