By SUMMERS ASKEW Jan. 22, 2018

Students return from winter break this week as classes resume for the Spring semester.

For some, the return comes after a five-week Netflix binge, avoiding everyone from high school at their local Target and pretending they’ll have enough time when they get back to school to find an internship. For others, however, the return comes after a semester of studying in an exotic Western European country, broadening their horizons by binge drinking legally.

The return of juniors who studied abroad is bittersweet for many. While the return promises seeing old friends and colleagues not seen for months, it also requires a period to re-acclimate to a home country in which they grew up, and to return to college which they have already attended for two years.

This year, the return of study abroad students is compounded by recent events that have changed the global political climate. Namely, this is the first group of students to be returning to a “shithole country.”

Susan Westwood has dealt with this shock firsthand. “I came back after keeping up with the news and I expected things to be a little bit different. But nothing, nothing, prepared me for this.”

The Office of Off-Campus Study has received an uptick in interest over the past year, a trend that continues as students remain subscribed to CNN alerts. At this rate, ninety percent of students will be studying abroad for a full year by 2020.