The article on Medium defines cultural shock and walks through its four stages. I highly relate to each of the four stages reflecting back on the time when I first moved to the States over 7 years ago.
* click here for the referenced article.
I experienced the “honeymoon phase” when I was just excited to see every possible thing in my new city, such as trying out a new restaurant even though I didn’t understand what dishes I was ordering and visiting the mall and browsing through every store. I quickly dived into the “frustration stage” as I could not express myself as clearly as I wanted to and sometimes missed out on homework instructions because I didn’t catch it or didn’t write it down fast enough.
Then came the prolonged but subtle “adjustment stage,” where small things in life made me realize that everything is becoming better, one step at a time. To my surprise, my language barrier was mostly gone by the end of the first three or four months, but my cultural barrier lasted into the first few years. It was until my senior year of high school when I started to write college essays and reflected on my journey when I realized that a complete understanding of the new environment isn’t necessary to thrive in the new surroundings, and I finally reached the last phase -- “acceptance stage.”
If you have experience living abroad or moving to a new country, how was your transition? Did you feel the four stages of cultural shock? Leave us some comments or emotions you were experiencing down below!
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