Setting out to study abroad is one of the greatest adventures a young person can embark on. It’s also likely to upend practically every aspect of your life. Here’s how to prepare and make this exciting part of your life’s journey as painless as possible.
Key Takeaways
- Get your essential paperwork organized before or soon after arrival to minimize related stress.
- Actively seek out opportunities to build a new social circle, making sure to include both other international students and locals.
- Explore your immediate community while using eSIM service and local apps to navigate daily life and stay connected more reliably.
- Combine useful habits from home with a flexible new routine that adds familiarity and structure to your life.
- Learn enough of the local language and customs to connect with people more naturally.
- Create a healthy schedule for keeping in touch with loved ones while building a life in your new surroundings.
Sort the Paperwork out Early
Studying abroad is hectic enough without wondering where your healthcare is coming from or for how long you’re eligible to stay in the country. Sorting out as much of the paperwork as you can before arrival and when first settling in gives you a strong foundation for a much smoother start to your student life.
First, make a checklist of every document you’ll need and every procedure you’ll have to go through to make your residence legal. Find out which documents you can secure from home online, and which require you to make appointments at official institutions when you arrive. You can then deal with specifics like immigration permits, health insurance, banking, and tax registration, etc.
Also, be sure to keep all your important documents in one place and make digital backups, just in case.
Build Your Social Circle with Intent
As exciting as studying abroad can be, it’s also jarring. All your friends and family are back home, and keeping up over messages and social media isn’t the same. Dividing all your time between lecture halls and your room is a surefire way to make the experience less impactful and far more miserable.
The trick is to expose yourself to as many places and opportunities for friendships to form organically. Joining a club, frequenting popular student hangout spots, and attending events all help. Be proactive and introduce yourself to others.
It’s important to try to create a mixed social circle. Fellow international students will get your struggles better, while locals can help you get over culture shock and adapt to life in their country more quickly.
Get to Know Your Immediate Surroundings
Exploring your host country should definitely be one of your long-term goals. But first, make thoroughly exploring your neighborhood and the way to school a priority. Note bus stops, pharmacies, places where you can do laundry if your accommodations don’t allow for it, gyms, local cafés, and any other place of interest.
Getting your digital bearings has become almost as important. Say you’re heading to England, you’ll first want to get the best eSIM for the UK so that you can go online from anywhere without having to depend on spotty or potentially unavailable Wi-Fi. Then, you can download local transport and food delivery apps, check restaurant reviews, get apps that notify you of cultural goings-on, etc.
Doing this is all about creating familiarity and regaining control. Once you know where to go and what you can do, you’ll start to feel more comfortable in a city that doesn’t feel as foreign and strange anymore.
Prioritize Establishing a Routine
Another way of building resilience to change is by preserving useful old habits and building up a new routine. Nothing about your move says that you can’t continue to have breakfast at the same time each day, take walks to relax, or do other things you enjoyed doing back home.
Develop a weekly rhythm that accounts for study, work, social activities, and relaxation. It shouldn’t be rigid, but it has to provide the structure you’ll need to keep going and create a comforting familiarity.
Learn the Language Enough to Get By
It’s easy for international students to spend much of their time in a bubble where everyone interacts in English. While convenient, this can also limit your options. You don’t need to treat learning the local language like another subject, but you should pick up enough of it to be able to function in most social situations without assistance.
Learn how to ask for directions, order something, and ask for services. It’s also a good idea to supplement your newfound language skills with knowledge about the local culture and customs. Respecting local etiquette will help you get a better sense of your hosts’ values while also making it easier to make new meaningful connections.
Don’t Let Homesickness Dictate Your Life
It’s perfectly normal to feel homesick when you’re all alone in a new place, and it doesn’t mean you made the wrong decision! That said, spending too much time pining for home and keeping in touch with loved ones can be counterproductive.
Exploring and making friends helps. So does creating and sticking to a check-in schedule that lets you keep up with things back home without constantly retreating to your old life.
