If you would like more information on the things that are typical struggles for each year and issues that may be relevant to certain groups and suggestions on what to do, read the information below. *Information based on Chickering’s Seven Vectors (Student Development Model)
*Reminder that all traditional aged college students don’t always fit into neat categories. Other factors such as ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disabilities influence developmental processes.
When people come to a new environment they experience different feelings. They sometime feel happy and like this environment but after that, they begin to not only hate it, but also hate even people and everything else in the new culture. However, when they stay for enough time, they begin to adjust to this environment and enjoy their life more. These feelings are called culture shock. Here are the stages of culture shock.
Many students bring unrealistic expectations to a foreign culture. A set of cross-cultural effectiveness guidelines would include:
Certain personality characteristics which are useful to development would include:
Issues that international students my discuss in therapy: How to deal with loneliness, depression, anxiety, culture shock, roommate conflict, homesickness; fitting in to a new culture; dating or meeting new people; not doing well in school.
Information taken from Texas A&M Study Abroad program website.
You just came out of your adolescence and now your entering a new stage of development as a young adult in college. As a young adult, you may still want and need the help and guidance of your parents, and maybe dependent on them for some things, but you also are preparing for being independent and living on your own. Your biggest influence in adolescence (beside your parents) have been your peers and finding a social group helped you learn about yourself through identifying or disassociation with such peer group(s). One of several obstacle to overcome may have been peer pressure and finding or fitting into your social peer group. This has all been important in the developmental process of finding your own identity.
This new developmental era you are entering through your college years will help to develop more social, intellectual, emotional and physical skills for the next stages of your life. During these years in college, you will be developing and understanding your own unique identity independent from parents, family or friend. All of the following are skills you may be challenged to learn during your college years. Everyone varies with which skills they will need to learn, and which tasks will be more challenging to master.
The overall goal in these four years is to find out who you are as a unique individual. and the challenge is to accept yourself, no matter how similar to or different from your parents and friends you may become. The struggle for both student and parents is to come to a place of acceptance with each others individuality and differences. It is not an easy task to master everything you need to before you move on to the next stage of your life? Each person will struggle with different things. This time in your life will bring new experiences, and experiments to try new things. Some things in your life will come into question or will be challenged. College provides the environment to be exposed to different ideas, people, and experiences.
Anytime you struggle with new information, it can cause stress. A person can feel anxiety, fear, confusion, imbalance, and insecurity. Anytime a person is struggling, it is an opportunity for positive growth to occur. These struggles can be from:
The best way to deal with a struggle and master the developmental task at hand is to seek the appropriate university resources. CAPS can help with many of the issue or challenges that you will face during your years here at UCF.