Exchange Agents

Hi, my name is Benett Zawasky and this summer I will be one of the exchange agents volunteering for the education abroad program at VIU.

I am a third-year psychology major/sociology minor that just recently attended the University of Hertfordshire for the Spring 2020 semester. While I was away on exchange, I was able to do a bit of travel before the school semester, seeing the cities of Munich and Prague and while in the UK I managed to do quite a few weekend trips around England.

Hello, my name is Austin White, and I am volunteering as an exchange agent for the education abroad department at VIU.

I am going into my fourth and final year at VIU in Computer Science. I did an exchange in the spring semester of 2020, to the university of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom. Before attending school, I was able to travel to Munich, Germany and Prague, Czechia. During my travels and studies, I was able to meet several new people and quickly make new friends from all over the world.

Hello, my name is Brodie Hay, I am a fourth year VIU student studying Computer Science as well as a volunteer exchange agent working with the Education Abroad department at VIU.

This year I was lucky enough to go on exchange for the summer semester to Ostbayerische Technische Hochschule (OTH) Regensburg in Bavaria, Germany. I was able to get a lot of travelling done before my semester started, and I was lucky enough to visit places like Zurich, Budapest, Vienna, and a lot of different German cities!

Before you go abroad you hear and learn all about culture shock and you also talk about re-entry and the possibility of reverse culture shock. But the idea of returning to a country and culture you grew up in or are extremely familiar with and feeling discomfort and unfamiliar seemed strange. Especially since I had only been abroad for five months. However, this is an experience I had returning back home. Now, it may not have been necessarily reverse culture shock by definition, but the feeling of discomfort and unfamiliarity was definitely felt upon my return home.