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Exposure to strange lands with different cultures and customs can be confusing if not outright terrifying. However, studies indicate that children from one culture who travel to and grow up embracing a new culture gain a strong sense of self dependence that benefits them greatly as adults.
Most lean toward education-based career choices while a large percentage become self employed. A great number create their own companies, activity that mirrors the risk-taking any expatriate assumes when facing the unknown working and living abroad. Often times than not, children of expatriate parents are more or less forced to become independent thinkers and doers and it is this ability that helps them not only survive in a strange land, but thrive as well.
Diversity becomes a keyword and all embracing attitude for most children who experience life growing up abroad. Studies also indicate many expatriated children do tend to come “home” some out of curiosity, others to pursue educational opportunities for family and financial considerations. Repatriated young adults tend to do very well in post-high school education settings embracing diverse aspects about life, possessing open-minded visions that have been greatly influenced through life abroad.
Furthermore, these well adjusted multi-cultural young adults act not only as ambassadors for their native countries, but spokespeople for their adopted lands. Plus, depending upon the length of time living abroad, repatriated children and young adults might become passionate cheerleaders for their adopted lands thus acting as the best unpaid salespeople these countries could ever provide.
The experiences living abroad can clearly lead young repatriated children and adults toward career choices. Since their experiences led them to successful lives living in foreign lands, many academic and corporate settings try to solicit repatriated individuals to share their experiences preparing a new generation toward life abroad.
Because most repatriated children have successfully made the transition back to their own native lands, their skills learned that provide them the ability to adapt and thrive most likely propel them through successful college careers – and beyond. In fact, the experiences growing up in a foreign setting do translate to an embracing experience as many studies show expatriate children who return home to complete educations tend to seek greater adventures post-graduate once again in foreign lands. It must get in under your skin.
These “graduates” who invent third-culture lifestyles go a long way toward creating a world that is more accepting than generations before.
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