From apartments with frescoed ceilings to townhouses decorated with posters of John Belushi. From breath-taking cathedrals to the Egan Chapel. From thrilling foreign nightclubs to Bravo. Many students who studied abroad last semester have been finding it hard return to life at Fairfield. Diane Fields ’07 studied in Florence, Italy. “It’s hard to come back and be right in the middle of junior year and adjust to life at Fairfield,” she said. “It can be culture shock in reverse,” said Susan Fitzgerald, director of Study Abroad. According to Fitzgerald, most students study in major cities of the world and “are used to the whole city life being available.” She believes one of the major factors in this reverse culture shock is that students are coming back to a very suburban campus. “Coming back to the townhouses seems very anti-climactic after having them be built up for so long and just spending a semester in Italy,” Fields said. Catherine Peirano ’07, who studied in Florence, felt the same way. “I love living in the townhouses but it’s definitely different from living in an apartment in the middle of a city,” she said. “[In Florence] if you were bored, you could just walk outside.” Katherine O’Neill ’06 spent last spring in London and said the transition from city life back to suburban Fairfield is challenging. “I loved living in the center of one of the largest, most exciting cities in the world,” she said. “It was so easy to meet new people, and I was surrounded by some of the most amazing architecture in the world.” Brian Cavanaugh ’07 studied in Beijing, China, and was placed in Claver with other students who studied abroad last fall. “We are separated from our class, so it’s different from freshman and sophomore year,” he said. Students also find that their weekends are very different. “I definitely can’t pick up and travel on the weekends like I used to,” Peirano said. “When I was in Italy, I spent the weekends going from country to country, and now I am going from townhouse to townhouse,” said Fields. “I miss having the opportunity to meet new people every weekend, especially new people with British accents,” said O’Neill. There is a second factor that has an effect on a student’s adjustment back to campus, according to Fitzgerald. “Not too many people want to share their experience with them,” she said. Fields said that she has felt this way since she has been back. “I feel like I want to talk about my experience more than people want to hear about,” she said. “It’s like word vomit. I can tell people are getting annoyed with me, but I just can’t stop.” Cavanaugh feels that students who do not go abroad already have an idea of the experience. “They don’t want to hear a half-hour story,” he said. “Something major has happened to students [during their time abroad],” Fitzgerald said. “Studying abroad broadens your whole horizon.” According to Fitzgerald, it is hard for students to understand the change that has gone on inside them, and they need help with that reflection. Art history professor Philip Eliasoph is the founder and academic director of Fairfield’s Florence, Italy, program. He also agrees there is a change that a student goes through after being abroad for nearly four months. “During that time, each student was forced to confront their own abilities in new ways,” he said. “The unexpected demands of translating foreign documents, exchanging currencies, coping with local customs and idiosyncratic varieties of living in a distant land is a surefire training ground for ‘Life Lessons 101.'” Fields felt the same way. “I like to think I get life credit for being abroad,” she said. As a result of the experience in a foreign country, Eliasoph has noticed that “our students become intrepid seekers of new knowledge and new experiences.” Fitzgerald has one major hope for students who have studied abroad. “[I hope] that students integrate this experience into what they are doing now, here at Fairfield,” she said.
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