Planning Your Return Home at the End of Your Gap Year

We know you’re too busy having fun and soaking up every adventure-filled moment of your Gap Year experience to even begin considering your days abroad are numbered, but wise students know that preparing to transition to life back home requires some advance prep. Sure, you’re excited to reunite with loved ones and stuff your face with breakfast tacos – not to mention taking a long shower with (gasp!) a loofa – but there’s much more to returning home than these simple pleasures.

There are, often, unfamiliar emotional and psychological responses to anticipate. Reverse culture shock and a grasping for the past are not unusual to feel. You might even begin to wonder if your Gap Year was nothing but a dream.

Here’s my best advice for winding down your time abroad in a way that sets you up for long-term success.

Take Some Photos

Then, take some more.

Whether you realize it or not, you’ve adapted greatly to your life abroad. Remember the wonderment on your days strolling the streets of your Gap Year destination, how everything was interesting, new, and different? Now you might scurry by without giving a second thought. This usually indicates that the strange has transformed to the ordinary, and you’re no longer seeing your new destination with visitor’s eyes.

But, try to hold tight to that wonderment. Record as much of your everyday life as you can, especially those ordinary people, places, and things you want to remember.

Say a Culturally Appropriate Goodbye to Your New Friends (& Family)

We have a hunch you’ve made some special bonds on your Gap Year. Be sure to acknowledge these special relationships by carving out time to say goodbye in a way that feels good – and in a way that is culturally appropriate. Hugs, notes, handshakes, a hand on the shoulder. A polite grasping of your right fist with a slight tilt of the head in a bow.

Collect contact info, too – Facebook CAN be more than a soundboard for the minute details of your life. The ability to keep in touch regularly with long distance friends is one of the great benefits on this giant social network.

Mentally Prepare Yourself

Think about how returning home is both similar and different from going abroad – you’ll be entering a new culture again, albeit a more familiar one. But since you’ll be coming home with new perspectives and a new sense of self, you might be surprised how your old haunts feel a little foreign.

Brace yourself for an adjustment period – feeling comfortable at home won’t happen overnight. Some things, even your friends and family, might seem strange (or unsettling).

Get Ready For Some Cultural-Catch Up

While I largely consider my time away from the US during the height of Angry Birds a blessing, it’s naive of returnee travelers to think that they didn’t miss out on SOMETHING important while abroad – many linguistic, social, political, economic, entertainment, and current event topics may be unfamiliar to you.

In reality, laughing with friends and family over the fads and (seemingly) “big deals” that happened while you were gone is a great way not only to reconnect, but also to reflect on the transience of all these trends.

Avoid Judgment & the Comparison Game

Before traveling abroad, you probably read countless articles and advice around the theme of having an “open mind.” The same rings true for when you return home. You might be quick to make snap judgments about people and behaviors back home given your newly “enlightened” sense of being. While we don’t mean to undermine the powerful realizations you’ve undergone while abroad, it’s important not to diminish the lives of your friends and family back home.

Instead, cultivate sensitivity. Patience, reflection, and a sense of love for everyone’s journey are a good remedy for judgement. Be genuinely interested in what your friends and family have been doing while you’ve been abroad.

Making comparisons between cultures and nations is a perfectly normal response to your experiences; however, Gap Year returnees must be careful not to be seen as too critical of home or too lavish in praise of things foreign.

Lean on Your Support Networks

Now is not the time to cry into a bowl of rice while watching Mulan and longing for the good ol’ days abroad in China. Instead, commit to processing your entire experience in the company of those who also value international experiences or who have been transformed by life abroad.

Your Gap Year friends are a good resource, but look further into your communities, too. Find groups on campus. Connect with travelers in your home town. The networks are there, you just need to find them, put on that brave smile (like when you boarded that plane abroad!), and be vulnerable as you navigate the up’s and down’s of life back home.

Give yourself permission to ease into the transition.

It’s not an easy process, but it’s an important one – perhaps the most important phase of your entire experience abroad. Now’s the time for you to make good on your commitments as a global citizen and put into practice the lessons you’ve learned while overseas. Hop to it!

Photo Credit: Binyamin Melli