Study Ireland – Stories & Guides from International Students

Nightly Facetime calls, dozens of unanswered Whatsapp messages, and holiday greeting cards sent through Irish customs. Such is the reality for many international students who lack the opportunity of returning to their home country over the course of the school year, instead opting to travel home for brief intervals during winter and summer break. A profound yet
underacknowledged challenge that emerges for international students is maintaining a social balance between family members or friends from home, and newly-formed relationships blossoming here at UL. The two seem to exist in separate worlds entirely, making it difficult to integrate my home and school life from both social and cultural perspectives. Better yet, the process of assimilating my lifelong American compatriots into the UL community presents unique cross-cultural challenges. From personal experience, I have found that creating a routine for interacting with family and friends is quintessential to keeping my family up to date on my new cultural home here in Ireland at UL, as well as my academic undertakings.

A major obstacle is the convergence of cultural traditions. Thanksgiving is fast approaching– a day in America that symbolises communal synthesis and familial unity. Gatherings of family, friends, and colleagues are common, as Thanksgiving is widely considered the “initiation” of the Christmas season– a uniquely American tradition. Similarly, College Christmas here at UL was merely an ordinary day back home. Describing the various social traditions and exploits of Christmas Day came as a revelation to family and friends, which allowed for a unique instance of cross-cultural transmission that allowed me to feel as if my loved ones at home were turned into the UL community and its unique traditions. Constructing communicatory “bridges” between home and school social groups as a means of transmitting cultural information about my new life here in Ireland has been a challenging yet enlightening process. Communicating traditions back and forth puts me in a unique position as a so-called “cultural liaison,” a role I am more than willing to accept as the first international student amongst my friends and family.