Dimensiones del síndrome de Burnout

This isn’t like moving into college, she thinks, for she’s just now grasped how much luggage she has, and how many stairs she must climb up and down in order to leave the train station. Somewhere over there are taxis and a rotation of buses; she can see the drivers smoking cigarettes by the road. But she is here with two big suitcases and two carry-ons that just sneaked through security under the size limit. At the time, maximizing her luggage seemed like a good idea. The more sweaters, photographs and books she shoves into her duffel bags, the less homesickness, the less chill, the less money spent on semester-long replacements. Now, she wishes she could set her pile of luggage on fire.

Tucked into her hand is a carefully written and memorized address worn with checking and rechecking. When the cabbie asks, “Where to?” in the heavy, old country accent she has been dreaming of but cannot understand, she consults her paper, and fumbles to say “19 Fraser Avenue, but I have to go to New Hall first.” Her words are not even that articulate, but he nods as if he understands and guns the hatchback out of the parking lot, dodging the bus for DUNDEE as it swings into the bus station. She squints at the yellow hills, trying to decide if she remembers Fife from a memory of a former life, or this one. Everything seems golden in that way that agricultural places are at 4:00 p.m. late summer when the light strikes off the sea. She can’t see the sea from here, or really even smell it; the last she saw of it was three seals sunning on a rock near—what’s it called?— Burntisland.

But what if there are two New Halls in St Andrews? What if he forgets? What if she’s not really on her way to St Andrews at all?

The cab passes the Welcome to St Andrews sign just as she sees the water. They pass the Old Course and its hotel hulking like a fort above the green. An old cyclist pushes on against the wind.

The driver whips around a roundabout and she feels her stomach quake. If she felt hunger on the train, the headache growing out of her neck has killed it. She looks out the window. Some buildings here are unquestionably old. Others, like the one they are pulling up to now, are ugly and 30 years new. But nothing looks like the buildings left behind at home. There is little tradition of brick in Scotland, so the mainstay of Virginia colleges and Ivy League universities is distinctly absent. Everything is stone. Grey, wind and water- worn stone buildings with limey black tears streaking down the corners of the walls. Physics. Math. New Hall. All surrounded by a silent mob of purple and navy blue Peugeots.

She almost assumes disaster: the receptionist won’t have her key, will have given it to someone else, the desk will be closed. She imagines what she will do when inevitably turned out on the street with a pile of bags. She stares at the green carpet until the girl in front of her finishes explaining how her key still won’t work. Then she looks up, bites her lip and reminds herself of this command: “I’m here to pick up my keys.” She wonders if communication would be easier in a country where she wasn’t fluent in all the wrong words. Americans and British—“a people divided by a common language” indeed.

The woman understands her though and brings a wad of keys with red and green and pink plastic labels on them. The woman makes her sign a slip, pay a deposit, and then keys are hers.

The cabbie pulls into a quiet residential area. Here we are, he says, that’s £10. She hands him the bill, plus too much change as a tip. Her arms shake as she picks up her bags and looks at the conjoined network of grey pebbly houses all intertwined and silent. She stops in front of the door labeled 19, and without thinking too much, walks inside. Her first thoughts:hide, food, phone card, mom, and maybeboyfriend. But first she brushes her hair, wipes the mascara smudges under her eyes, and trudges upstairs to make friends.

The next morning, at orientation they are queuing—she likes this word, queuing, but is unsure about it—into the music hall two by two. Every third girl wears skinny jeans regardless of body shape, although she notices that most university girls in Europe are not overweight. Registration, or rather, matriculation, is when the world sees how the Milan, New York and London fashions have trickled down.

During the daylight they all look like nervous students trying not to look nervous, queuing in a queue they clearly want to break out of, touching their hair, consulting their mobile. No one takes their coats off as they wait. All the side doors stand open to function as one-way exits, and further chill the already barn-like building. Their coats are boiled wool in red, blue, green, or anoraks in black, taupe, or the blue and black North Face all-weather jackets.

The Xains, the Chens, and the XXXs denote the Chinese students who, along with the Americans, dominate the international student body. They beam and scurry, get into the wrong lines, and miss entire sections of the matriculation process. “I need picture” they say, holding out their matriculation schedule. Some of the girls travel in pairs. Most of the boys travel in silence.

The Americans try to accept this is not the first-year college experience they’ve worked through before. Some of them attempt to blend in, digging deep into their prep school roots and brushing their hair straight, donning pristine jeans, loafers and sweaters, topping it with a scarf. Some of them huddle in their university sweatshirts. Some have been here for years and arrive in glorified pajamas.

This American girl’s photograph has not arrived and thus she has no ID card waiting for her. This flusters her. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “I’m very organized. Someone else sent it for me. I know I should have done it myself,” even as the photo tech guides her to a seat in front of the camera.

The boys are tamer, and also confused. “That lady over there said I had to come over and get a card?” one says, hopefully.

“Did you send in a photograph?” the technician asks. The boy stares.

“Do you have a passport-sized photo with you?” she continues. This causes more wide-eyed head shaking, except for a few intrepid boys. “Yeah! Yeah I’ve got a photo,” and they walk over to the photo tech at her scanner, and thrust their state drivers license at her. “Oh,” they say, when she tells them she needs an actual photograph, and begin to get the hang of feeling a little stupid.

Managing

Danes celebrate birthdays with Danish national flags stuck in the cakes like birthday candles. National identity is very important for Danes; it is troublesome for Spaniards, who still associate flamenco, football, and bullfighting with Franco and his mandatory Spanish nationalism. The American students learn their national identity is a permanent accessory. Getting rid of it is not an option; changing how they wear it is. The American student abroad initially has two choices: reject American national identity or cling to it. Every student finds their place somewhere on that spectrum.

In Impacts of Study Abroad Programmes on Students and Graduates103_{, Susan Opper,}

Ulrich Teichler and Jerry Carlson describe study abroad students in terms of xenophilia— loving their new culture to the point of wanting to adopt it—or xenophobia, when they are scared of it to a point of disgust. Between these two extremes students line up like toy soldiers.

One might attempt to describe a typical example of each kind of student. Perhaps xenophobes wear their American-ness on their Abercrombie and Fitch sleeves throughout the duration of their stay. Perhaps the xenophiles adopt each European uniform in turn, from fur-lined boots to enormous scarves to 80’s tunics. The xenophobes frequently use

dudeand likeduring their four to twelve months abroad, and ask loudly in Tesco why the

hellthere’s no Betty Crocker brownie mix. Often, the Europe-loving students are verbally impressionable, and will learn to stretch theira’s and use the local slang as quickly as they learned to swear when they were thirteen.

But mostly they are naive. Those who studied the cultural notes in theirLet’s Goor

Fodor’sare only ahead of the crowd in that they know how to order a jug of tap water in

103_{S. Opper, U. Teichler, and J. Carlson.Impacts of Study Abroad Programmes on Students and Graduates..” Higher} Education Policy Series 11, Volume 2. Jessica Kingsley Publishers. London, 1990. p.122.

French (une carafe d'eau) or that eggplants and zucchini are called aubergines and courgettes. They won’t know the important things that guidebooks can’t include in a chapter on culture, like thatpantsmeansunderwearto English-speakers on this continent, or that at the end of an event, whether a rugby game, multilingual scavenger hunt, or a day at work, it is expected that they stay for a cup of coffee or a pint. They might go to London knowing that it won’t be just the white people who have a Cockney accent, but it is a sure guarantee that someone of Chinese descent and a heavy Scots accent will startle them. They may expect the French to be rude, but will not expect all the political questions from the Danes, the pushing, shoving, and sorry!’s in the Tube from the Londoners, and the unabashed bluntness from Czechs. The first time they arrive at a shop at 2:00 p.m. in France or 5:00 p.m. in Britain and find it shut, or at midnight in Spain and find it open, they’ll wonder which planet they landed on.

American students arrive surprised that Europeans have video games, yet horrified at Victorian plumbing and crate-sized refrigerators. Things like a bedroom with one electrical socket, and a twenty-minute walk to class dumbfound them. And this is before they realize their host family is still using dial-up, pay-per-minute Internet access but the call shop across the street features Skype and World of Warcraft for pennies an hour.

Sometimes the shock is a little more unexpected. “My big surprise,” says Maya, “was not being able to read signs. I assumed because Danes speak English that it would be kind of like in Canada where they have signs in French and English. I can’t read the signs and I’m not able to pronounce words very well, which makes asking for directions hard. People in mykollegiumspeak Danish, and I spend a lot of time not talking. I’m not used to that.”

For others, the surprise is how they have cut themselves loose and look down at the severed apron strings with no remorse at all. Benjamin said his parents had no idea why he was going abroad. “You’ll go crazy,” they told me. “You’ll be too homesick.” But is

he homesick? He laughs. “I miss my dog.” Megan would happily not go home, and that scares her. She came to Amsterdam planning to graduate in a year, spend a semester at home while applying to law schools, and then go to law school. This is the plan she told me about at the beginning of our session, with a certain amounts of hesitation in her voice. Now, the only thing she knows she’s doing for sure is traveling in Europe this summer, dependant upon her parents’ generosity.

The student bridges the gap between tourist and resident with a slow, crushing sense of being born. What the students first find cute about the Old World—the narrow winding streets of cobblestone, the ancient homes—becomes annoying when trying to walk quickly to class in heels, or trying to stay warm in their flat. They gradually realize that what seems hideously American—the Starbucks, thehypermarches, the McDonald’s—comes with the awkward bonus of providing all their homesick needs.

All, but the ability to make life abroad easy. “I kind of knew what I was getting myself into, but still, coming abroad is a surprise,” Myrna, in Florence says. “You can’t believe you’re hearing other people speaking a new language. I didn’t know what to do at first. I didn’t know the city, no one was here with me, and I didn’t know how to read a map. I didn’t want to get lost.”

So what did you do?

“I started traveling. I remembered that I came here to see Europe, and that got me moving.”

Why?

It liberates the vandal to travel--you never saw a bigoted, opinionated, stubborn, narrow-minded, self-conceited, almighty mean man in your life but he had stuck in one place since he was born and thought God made the world and dyspepsia and bile for his especial comfort and satisfaction. - -Mark Twain, The American Abroad speech, 1868

Laura came to Austria largely to see what would happen to her in a new environment. “A good friend of mine studied abroad in Rome,” she says, “and came back much more mature and able to take care of herself.” Her academic goals were to learn the language, but “I wanted to get to know myself,” she says. “You don’t really know what you’re capable of until you don’t know what the hell you’re doing.”

Ask a study abroad student why she or he thinks they need to go to another country to study. Most of them are capable of coming up with an impressive answer; however some of the honest ones will laugh; they aren’t really going to Europe to study. Unless students intentionally pick rigorous academic programs, they are very likely to look at a semester away as a semester vacation. At Naropa University’s creative writing program in Prague, most of the students said that they came to Prague to focus on their writing. But the two administrators, Lisa and Jolie, said that most of the students came looking for an easy semester. “The Naropa students’ grades transfer directly back to Naropa,” Lisa said, “but students from the other universities can choose to not count the grade from a class. So if they bomb a course, it won’t necessarily hurt them. Some of them were definitely taking advantage of that option.”

Classes at the Prague program included an optional film studies class and yoga class. Do the students attend the optional classes? “No,” Jolie laughed, who taught the film studies class and translated for the yoga class. The only student who regularly attended both optional classes was the older, non-traditional student who was there on a no-credit basis.

A young man from Cornell University admitted in an interview with theNew York Timesthat he chose to study abroad in Seville because he would be legally able to drink and his grades there would not affect his transcript.104 _{According to the article, this was}

common to many of the students in the Seville program, and as with many programs, the American students socialized with each other instead of making friends with the Spanish students.

Some people, often parents and educators, say that twenty and twenty-one year olds aren’t responsible enough to handle being thousands of miles away from parents and a university, in a culture where drinking is permitted by age 18, lectures are optional, and sex can be as casual as they want it to be. If students go abroad for the wrong reasons or at an underdeveloped maturity level, they risk spending a great deal of money without ever getting the cultural enrichment and global perspective they came for. Their traveler’s checks might go to Prada bags and alcohol instead of train fare, pot houses instead of art museums, and spring breaks recovering from hangovers and one-night stands instead of 11th_{century cathedrals. And lots of times, they will.}

At the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (CMRS) in Oxford, applicants must have a high GPA and good references in order to be accepted, which means that unless they are lazy geniuses, they are used to working diligently at their studies. CMRS also uses Oxford’s tutorial system, which require a paper a week per tutorial. If the paper isn’t written, or written well, the student must survive for an hour alone in a room with the tutor and his wrath. The only two opportunities to really procrastinate are for the research essay and the integral exam, but one learns very quickly that while no one will hold your head over a pile of books and make you read all ofThe Consolation of Philosophyweeks before the final, you will suffer all the same on exam day. There is no cramming several books’ worth of possible essay questions the night before.

104

Some students try, and squeaked by as necessary. Other students attend universities participating in the Great Books program, which means they have special tutorials and fewer written papers. Lisa, the junior dean at St Michael’s Hall as well as an alumnus of CMRS, mentions this and shakes her head. In her opinion, when American kids discover a culture where they can drink at 18, fewer requirements do not lead to a better study abroad experience.

Graduate students do not always set a better example. International grad students are expected to be in grad school to study, to work hard for a higher degree. Overseas