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CommunicationDiscuss correspondence with your student and decide on a time each week or month that you will email or make telephone contact. Be sure you each have addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, and best times to make contact with the other. Be sure to take into account the difference in time zones and occasional "misses" due to unexpected changes in schedule on either end. Check with your phone provider regarding discounted international calling rates. Perhaps you recall the adjustment that your student had to make when he or she first arrived at UMD: everything was new and different, and nothing was quite the way it was at home. All of this will be true once again, though perhaps even in exaggerated form, in another country. Remember that what may be relayed to you as an emergency will often sort itself out. We know of many instances in which a student has called home in distress shortly after arriving at a far-away destination; the parents worried about whether to bring the student home, or send more money, or travel to be with the student. The parents phoned back a short time later and received no response and imagined all sorts of dire scenarios until finally reaching the student several hours later and finding out that all was now well and that the student had made a new friend over coffee and was beginning to enjoy the new setting. Trust your student. Remember that handling these challenges is part of the adventure of being far from home and part of growing up. |
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