Some people don’t get to have that typical four-year college experience that everyone raved to us about our senior year of high school, when we all were anxiously awaiting graduation so we can start the journey of the “best years of our lives”. We were brainwashed in high school to believe that college would be this place where everything would suddenly be okay, and all those questions and confusion we had would disappear.
When I was originally in the process of choosing a school, I was basing my decision off of this typical “college experience” that I had heard so much about. I wasn’t accepted to the colleges that I had planned on going to so I was very limited in my options. Eventually, I just went with my gut and chose a small liberal arts school in upstate New York. Coming from Long Island, the open land, the fresh air, and the down-to-earth people sounded refreshing. The big decision was made and now I was able to focus on prom and graduation and all of the other final events that ended my high school career.
Moving into my dorm room on the first day of school was much harder than I anticipated. Nothing about this school felt like home. I began to feel the distance from my real home. I missed my family and my friends. I was fearful about eating meals alone. I was sharing a bathroom with complete strangers. I had to do my own laundry. Surrounded by all these people my age who were supposedly going through the same thing I was, I had never felt more alone.
After some time though, the distance faded. I found ways to maintain contact with family and friends at home. I formed relationships with other students who also had fears about eating alone, so we all ate together. Those strangers in the bathroom transformed into neighbors and I did my first load of laundry successfully. This school became that second home I was hoping for, but while I was getting more and more comfortable with my environment, I realized that something was still missing.
I was an art major, but the art program at my school was devastatingly small. There were only six people including myself in the freshman class who were part of this program and most had very little artistic experience. I learned after spending some time in drawing and sculpture classes that I couldn’t see myself doing this for a living, but I still wanted to be in the creative world so I decided that maybe I should be studying art business.
It wasn’t sitting right with me, so I spoke to my advisor who immediately sent me pamphlets for graduate school, career services, and academic advising. I was in school for all of three weeks and I was already getting pamphlets about graduate school. My school was private and expensive so graduate school just wasn’t something that could be easily afforded. I looked into some of these pamphlets and discovered that these programs for art business were also undergraduate, so I applied.
After a couple acceptance letters, many tearful phone calls to my parents, and a few college visits, I made my decision to transfer for the spring semester of my freshman year at the last possible minute. I chose a school in lower Manhattan that had an undergraduate program for arts and entertainment management, the complete opposite of where I was.
You’re probably thinking that I’m absolutely crazy for not giving my school a chance for a full academic year, but nothing felt right about what I was doing so I had to leave. I figured sooner was better than later.
I returned to school after Thanksgiving break with less than three weeks left ready to share the news. Some people were harder to tell than others. My friends were curious and supportive, making it much harder to leave than I expected. I learned that home isn’t a place; it’s a feeling created by the people who you surround yourself with. It's feeling of security and love, and that’s what I was leaving.
So I walked away from the floor dinners, house parties, and the beautiful campus to move to the Big Apple. New York City was so much closer to home for me so I figured it should be no problem adapting to my new environment, which really couldn’t be farther from the truth. Since I was beginning at this school in January when all of the other freshmen began back in August, I found it really challenging to make friends. People had already had their groups and bonded over experiences such as orientation and other school activities that I had participated in, just at a school five hours away.
Being in a city where there isn’t a campus, I discovered a lot of people go home on the weekends and there was also a level of maturity from the students that I didn’t find at my other school. My classmates were very independent. Many of them worked in addition to school and since Manhattan has so much to offer, there was a lack of clubs to join to meet other people.
While I was struggling socially, I was also struggling academically. I was taking many business courses for the first time and since I come from a background focused heavily on the arts, it was a real challenge. I spent many hours at the tutoring center and with professors just so I could complete basic homework assignments.
I questioned my decision to transfer every single day, coming up with every reason I possibly could as to why this was a horrible idea. I had to push myself in every way to the extreme in every direction in order to make this work, and that’s when I realized what was missing from my previous college. I’m currently entering the second semester of my sophomore year and looking back to where I was a year ago. There has been so much growth in me. My first school wasn’t challenging me in any way, which is what I really needed.
People have this idea that transfer students were miserable at their first school, but that really is far from true. College may not be the "best years of your life". College is just a part of your life that you should try to make the most of like any other part. We forget that life still goes on in college. There will be bad days, difficult times and a whole lot of stress, but there will also be great days, wonderful people, and hopefully a lot of valuable lessons that you will learn both in the classroom and out.
Choosing to transfer was a harder decision than actually choosing a college in the first place because any kind of change is hard. It took almost a year, but I am finally confident in my decision. I have made some wonderful friends at school and have learned more then I could’ve imagined possible in just one year. I still maintain contact with people from my first school and bring my experiences there with me as I move forward. Not everyone gets that typical four-year college experience like we were told, and that is totally okay.
