Essay On Culture Shock

1091 Words3 Pages

According to Quartz, 40% of foreign students in the United States have no close friends at school. Most of these international students come to the United States from China, India, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Canada ( 40% of foreign students in the US have no close friends on campus: The culture shock of loneliness). All these international students are bound to experience culture shock in some form or another. Culture shock is defined as anxiety that results from losing all familiar signs and symbols of social intercourse (Oberg). Culture shock often occurs during the process of settling to a new place that is different from the person’s homeland. Along side with anxiety, depression also occurs as a result of experiencing culture shock. …show more content…

In the beginning of the school year, all students are required to attend orientation and for universities, a tour around the school. International students can be easily recognized from their application and colleges can group these students according to where they come from. Grouping similar students together for orientation and tour allows these students to create new friendships early on and gives them a support group. Currently the system has it so that these students are usually grouped by majors but then it neglects the needs of the international students. In this system, these students are struggling and not having the opportunity to meet others that are in common with, especially for the non social ones. In a way, if colleges group these students together, they are guiding these international students to find friends and giving them the opportunity to find people that are similar. Some argue that this causes schools to make extra effort and funding to group these students by their homeland, but it is worth it because these students need this in order to deal with culture shock. The extra effort and funding should take into consideration that international students bring in $27 billion dollars to the United States economy (Haynie). With the amount of money these students bring in, the least colleges can do is to help ease their process of settlement. …show more content…

The amount of foreign students and their impact on the economy is increasing each year and colleges should put some extra focus on them. The effort of grouping these students by their homeland takes no extra effort, but simply a different kind of system than what we currently have. Students that come from other countries for school are guaranteed to experience culture shock which results in anxiety and depression. The cure for this type of anxiety and depression is to make friends that have similar backgrounds and to be social, but often times the situation and depression makes it difficult to find these friends. This is where colleges come in with their new system of grouping international students together, this process will prevent depression and anxiety from students. Culture shock would not have a negative connotation if colleges adapted this new system because students can easily adapt to new culture by adapting it with

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