Going Abroad Young Makes the Struggle Easier to Bear

I have almost no regrets about my career.

That doesn’t mean I’ve never failed. It means both my failures and my successes have become nourishment. Life demands choices at every turn. You get into two schools on the entrance exam, but which one do you go to? Where do you take a job? Should you stay in your current job, or transfer? Should you change jobs? Marriage, raising children, and so on.

But there is exactly one thing I do regret.

I never went abroad as a student.

I liked traveling, so I visited all kinds of places as a tourist. But once I actually lived in the United States, I realized that visiting and living are worlds apart.

First, there are the local customs unique to a place. When you’re just visiting, you can treat them as curiosities and leave it at that. But when you live there, you have to blend into them. That can create friction. And when it does, you have to decide whether to push back or not. That’s an extremely heavy thing to carry.

Next, once you’re living there, you have to work to earn a living. Making throwaway friends while traveling for fun is completely different from making coworkers you spend every day with. You’re not just having a good time all the time. Naturally, communication problems arise too. Differences in background, differences in views on life and death, differences in religion can all stand in your way. You have to face these seriously as well.

And then — though this varies somewhat depending on where you go and what environment you jump into — in many cases, a newcomer who just showed up is an extremely awkward presence for everyone else. In that situation, the typical move a conservative person makes is to look down on you. This isn’t desirable behavior, but it’s less malice than hostility, something closer to a defensive instinct, so to some extent I think it can’t be helped. When you enter a new environment, you should be prepared for this to some degree.

Now, the thing that eases these “hard elements” I’ve just listed is, needless to say, being a “student.”

One friend of mine told me that when he studied abroad in the US during college, he couldn’t follow English conversation at all and basically stayed shut in for about six months. He used that time to relearn English from the ground up, thoroughly. If you’re a student, even if you fail a few credits, it’s ultimately just a scratch. You have plenty of time. Being there to study is, by definition, the same as not having to work. How enviable is that. If you’re a teenager, whatever pride you’re carrying at that point amounts to very little. Top scores on a national mock exam? Got into one of Japan’s top universities? Lucky is the person who can throw away that kind of petty pride while still in their teens. Life after that stays happy the whole way through.

Suddenly going abroad as a working adult was, from my own experience, quite a grueling thing. It’s true that I learned real diversity, and I was able to build a new axis of values for myself. My repertoire of communication styles grew, and I got the chance to think about how I appear to others. But honestly, I think, “This wasn’t something I should have been doing at this age with a wife and kids to support.” (Thank you to my family.)

Originally published in Japanese at https://clazytech.com/2021/08/509/. Translated with LLM assistance and reviewed before publication.