How To Tolerate Your Friends When They Return From Studying Abroad

The Lemon Pledge7 years ago

Studying abroad was undoubtedly the greatest three months of my life. I got more fucked up, hooked up with more girls, and accrued more debt than at any point in my life, all while managing to ace my classes from the beach, wondering if I’d get skin cancer or liver cancer first. But guess what? I don’t fucking talk about it. Talking about studying abroad is like complaining your dad bought you a 2015 BMW for Christmas while your friend who pays his own tuition is getting ready for his part-time job just to make ends meet.

If your friends can’t remember that you studied abroad, surely one look at your Instagram will remind them, or they really just don’t give a shit about you enough to realize you disappeared for three months. But unfortunately for all of us, not everyone has this level of self-awareness. So as fall semester is a wrap and your friends return home from their semesters abroad, get ready to tolerate insane levels of conversation about shit you don’t care about.

The worst type of person is a one-upper. Combine this with someone who studied abroad and you’ll surely want to kill yourself listening to this kid talk. An older brother in my fraternity studied abroad, and I shit you fucking not, every single topic of conversation — whether it be cigs, chicks, trains, or political climates — with this guy involved a story from Germany. We get it, bro. You’re worldly.

It’s fairly easy to avoid these kids in the wild when you’re simply acquaintances, but what about when your roommate returns home and tries to introduce an afternoon tea time, which is in fact much less exciting than an afternoon tee time, and blasts European house music while reminiscing about that time he dropped Molly and finger blasted a “dime piece, bro” in a club bathroom — who, by the way, he conveniently can’t find on Instagram anymore.

You can’t even talk about the fun shit you did while they were gone – day-drinks, formals, court appearances, etc. – because they’ll always just respond with some passive-aggressive bullshit like “damn I wish I was there, but I mean I was abroad so I can’t really be mad about it. Oh speaking of day-drinking, we rented a private jet and…”

Eventually, you really only have two options: put your foot down, or move out. Personally, I hate roommate confrontation – the half-ass bitch fight that leads to weeks of residual awkwardness around the house (why else do I always do all the dishes?) – so clearly my vote is to move out immediately. Find some new friends that have never traveled more than 10 miles outside their hometown and learn to love them, because your study abroad friends have turned like a zombie on The Walking Dead..

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