My relationship with a certian graph
Yesterday in class I drew a simple graph on the white board. The X axis is a simple dotted line, and the Y doesn't even appear. Starting from the far left a single curved line begins on the X axis and climbs steeply to some given point, then drops equally steeply until it reaches the X and levels out. This process is then repeated below. I asked the students what the graph meant. Most just gave me blank looks, probably wondering what their crazy and slight esentric teacher is getting at now. I could tell by their confused looks that the Tokyo University bound students were giving it more thought than it was worth, so I quickly told them the answer: it's the cycle of culture shock.
I think most every person who's spent significant time abroad is familiar with this chart and would immediately recogｎize it. It was pushed on me during university before I studied abroad, while I was abroad, at my debriefing after going abroad, in the pre-departure for Japan conference, in the JET handbooks, at the new-comers conference, at my Morioka orientation and at each Mid-year conference I've attended... I will forever associate such a graph not with real analytical data, but with culture shock. But that:s neither here nor there.
The idea of the graph is to demonstrate the cycles a person who lives abroad goes through. The first upward spike is the honeymoon period, when the excitement and newness of the culture is just to wonderful and interesting to articulate adequately. Then life settles in, you notice some flaws, but hopefully still generally happy, so it all levels out. Then a bad day comes along, or homesickness strikes, or utter frustration blocks out those aspects of the culture you once loved... you sink below the line. But the cycle begins all over again. The hope is that by recognizing what is happening to you you'll spend more time at averagely happy/content than at the extremes.
I taught this to the class because the chapter is about living in a foreign country, and the vocabulary to express that experience. How convenient for them they have a person living it now! But I was thinking about the graph anyway, because I've been hovering below the "contented" line for a while now. I can't put my finger on why. Negative feelings are always just on the edge, waiting for me to slip-up. The only solution I can think of is to go home. But now here's the real kicker: I'm scared to go home.
Maybe more accurate is I'm scared of the decisions that I'll be facing when I return Sate-side. I've come to terms with living at home for a while, and am looking forward to that. But do I enter university again? What would I want to study? What kind of job do I want, and what will I settle for? My high school and college friends are spread out now and have their own lives, so will I be able to fit myself in, or do I just start over? What will happen to Adam and me? Do I spend my money on a good care so I won't have to worry about it for a while, or get a cheap one to hold me over until I have a steady income? How will I fill-out my life, what kind of hobbies to distract me from the daily grind? この感じです。
But on a hopeful note, according to that graph my mood should swing up again at some point. Lucky. I hope it continues to prove itself correct.