A mixture of confusing feelings is a common senior reaction as graduation approaches. On the one hand, you are naturally excited as high school ends and you prepare to move on to college. Yet feelings of sadness often creep in as you also realize you will be leaving your friends and families behind. Like most seniors, you too may find yourself spending a lot of time simultaneously feeling happy and sad.

You should expect a certain amount of stress around graduation time. Graduates are often pulled in several different directions. Friends, family, and girl/boyfriends all to want to spend time with you. And it seems as though there is never enough time. Understanding what is happening, and knowing it is normal, should help some. But there are also some other things you can do to make these final days good ones. Consider the following suggestions.

Reconcile your relationships

Make sure you leave on good terms with all of your friends. If you’ve had a falling out with someone, now is the time to mend the relationship. Rebuild any broken relationships before you leave. If you’ve had a disagreement with someone, work it out. Don’t leave on bad terms. Your memories of SAS and your friends will stay with you for the long haul. Make them good ones.

Acknowledge your friendships

Tell your friends you appreciate them. Let them know how important they’ve been to you. It is both important and helpful to communicate your appreciation, gratitude and affection to those who have been special to you before you leave. This also applies to teachers, parents, brothers, sisters--and, yes, even counselors. It’s good to tell people that you love them. By doing this, a sense of openness seems to remain even after you’ve left, which can help as you settle in to your new surroundings.

Think about where you'll be next

Be realistic about where you will be next. Some seniors approach college with a sense of dread and others with unrealistic visions of utopia. Neither are appropriate. College will be very different from SAS—in some ways, both better and worse. Be realistic about where you will be going and what will be happening.

Culture Shock? No Way!

Who would ever expect to feel like a stranger in his or her own country? Yet this does sometimes happen when you return "home" to begin college. Living abroad has changed you. Sometimes after living away from your homeland you can find yourself over idealizing or glorifying institutions and traditions back there. Once you return, however, you may find things are not how you remembered them.

A major expectation of most returnees is that people will be interested in their worldly experiences. The reality is that when you say "I lived in Singapore," the reaction is often a polite, "Oh," and then on to a new topic. It can be frustrating to learn that although you have had many enjoyable experiences abroad, very few people want to hear about them. Keep your answers short and see if the listener really wants to hear more before continuing to explain what it was like to live in Southeast Asia.

Sometimes when people return "home" they discover things are not as idyllic as expected. You may find yourself saying, "Well, in Singapore I used to..." Try to avoid saying that phrase if you can. Comparing situations to how they used to be may make you feel worse rather than better.

Culture shock--or reverse culture shock--is the feeling of disorientation that accompanies moving from one culture to another. It may well happen to you regardless of whether or not you’ve lived in the U.S. before. Suddenly, all the rules will be different. It is sometimes upsetting and usually exhausting to be in a situation in which you are not completely sure what is expected. It takes a while to learn or relearn all of the new rules, the new ways of behaving. This process, while it may seem difficult and negative, can actually be a powerful growth experience. You will be more of who you are at the end of your college career because you allowed yourself to experience this process. The following are the common phases many students report experiencing when they move to the US for college:

1. The honeymoon phase

• ...when you first arrive, everything is new and exciting.

2. Alienation and culture fatigue. The most common symptoms are

• ...withdrawal from or hostility toward your new culture
• ...low motivation toward school and meeting people
• ...depression
• ...homesickness
• ...anger or irritation over minor things
• ...psychosomatic illnesses
• ...overeating; craving foods from home
• ...oversleeping

3. The new culture and college life begin to make sense

• ...you gain new knowledge and understanding
• ...your self-confidence increases
• ...you go out to meet people
• ...you take pride in functioning successfully

4. Recovery, adjustment and adaptation

• ...acceptance by people at your new location
• ...acceptance of living in a new place
• ...enjoyment of and respect for cultural differences

What Can I Do to Help Myself?

Keep an open mind--be curious about the new and different. This means being willing to accept that although something may be different from the way it is at home, it isn’t necessarily bad or wrong.

Be patient with yourself and the people and situations you encounter. Americans, for example, can appear to be quite brusque and you may find some who are definitely prejudiced against foreigners. Choose your friends, make sure you have people around you who give you support.

Reserve judgment. Spend more time considering why something happened than you do on how "good" or "bad" it is. Perhaps some unpleasantness can be avoided in the future.

Keep your perspective. College is at least a four-year process and even when things are difficult in the immediate present, the "big picture" is what counts.

Keep motivated to succeed. You went through a difficult process to attend college or university, it is worth all of your efforts to make it successful.

Stay healthy. Make time to sleep, get some exercise, and try to eat some healthy meals.

Keep your sense of humor. Email your friends about all of the stupid, funny, unbelievable things that happen and that people say to you. They will help you keep chuckling. Just think of all the stories you can tell your friends.

Realize that you will embarrass yourself. And sometimes, people will try to embarrass you.

You will be most successful if you stay in close contact with other international students. Make sure you participate in the programs set up for international students. If you are in the US and become exasperated with the American way of life; remember that there is an entire group of people who are also experiencing what you are experiencing.

You’ll get along fine…