Job Discussion Forums

[Sweetsee]

What kind of advice should I give to an 18-year-old university bound exchange student from France who has landed at our school for 10 months?

[wintersweet]

I think you might have to narrow down what kind of advice a wee bit...

[Sweetsee]

Ahh, right...sorry about that. What I mean to say is that this student is very disappointed. Her perception of Japan and the reality of a girls' private high school in Japan are very different. As you might imagine, her maturity level and career aspirations are not on the same level as her classmates, the whole high school *beep* baby-sitting service is a real mind- blower for her.

Myself, I find it reprehensible that the school continues to accept exchange students. The last one pulled a runner to Narita without telling anyone but me and the one before that, left with more than half of her already paid for term remaining, both also experienced multiple failures of host-families.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention the one that ended up at my place when a former student's mother booted her for continuing to go out at night in her school uniform after being told not to. She said she was going to Jehovah's Witness meetings. Evidently, she never mentioned her affiliation with them when applying to the program. She stayed at my place twice in fact, the first time for 3 weeks without trouble. Then she got the boot at the other place and begged me to let her return. I didn't want to but somehow got fannagled into it. The first problem I had was that she never said a word to me. One evening I was watching tennis on TV and heard some chomping. Startled, I turned around to see her chowing down at the kitchen table. I asked her how long she had been sitting there and she said about 15 minutes. She said nothing to me in the mornings and nothing when she came in the door. I decided that I wouldn't say anything to her and wondered how long this would continue. In fact, the first day she was there was a saturday and after coming home from a morning tennis match I was busy all day with housework as my significant other was ill. She lazed around watching TV and then went to sleep in her room at 1:00 p.m. The last straw came one evening when I sat down to dinner. The moment I sat down she got up and put her plate in the sink. Before she did I noticed her cell phone on the table and she was wearing heavy make-up. Not only that, but when she bent to put the dish in the sink, her skirt was hiked up so far that I could nearly see her bumm. She came back about 90 minutes later, said nothing and I asked to have a word with her. The next day I told my boss I didn't want her staying at my place any longer.

Sorry to trouble you with all that.

[Glenski]

You say that she has "just landed". But it seems clear that she has been there about a month or more. Which is it, and how much longer does she have to stay?

Exchange students at my own school don't always last because they lie about things (usually their homestay situation) and/or they simply are not informed enough about what they are going to face here.

I find it hard to believe that a Jehovah's Witness would have her skirt hiked up so high. Something is rotten in Denmark here.

To help avoid problems with culture shock, I recommend having all potential exchange students read these web sites and take the video exam.
http://athome.nime.ac.jp/
www.colorado.edu/ealld/ath/index.html

[Sweetsee]

Hi Glenski,

She has been here since August 15 or so and started at school on Sept. 1. She is paid up for 10 months.

[Sweetsee]

(edited)

[canuck]

Why not just tell her that things are different, give it time, do her best to study Japanese. Focus on the positives. There are lots of positives being a foreigner and spending a year in a Japanese school.

[freddie's friend daniel]

To be honest I didn't really get what you were asking for in the original post. I agree that it's irresponsible for your school to accept exchange students and then just leave them dangling here with no support, if that is what has happened. But on the other side we are talking about an 18 year old, technically an adult and not some little kid. You mentioned yourself that there is a big difference between her maturity level and that of her classmates, and that's she's university-bound. She probably needs a lot less hand-holding than you think.
So, as I said, I don't get it...is it a problem with the school or is it a problem with this student? You said she is disappointed- disappointed with what exactly? There's nothing you can do to retroactively change her misconceptions about what it would be like to live here so she has only two options: go home or stay in Japan, in which case your only advice can be "gambatte".
Before I came back to Japan in April, I had contact with a 17 year-old German student who was coming here on exchange for a year. We chatted and it became blatently obvious that she had no idea what lay ahead. She enthused about the J-pop bands she had been idolising for years and proudly declared herself a manga otaku (Oh god!). 6 months in, I have no idea how things are going for her but it's either sink or swim, isn't it? It was her idea to go to Japan and her responsibility to find out as much real information before going (other than reading manga 24/7, I mean). What she gets out of the experience depends on what she puts into it and that goes for your student too.