I struggled a lot deciding to transfer. Sometimes I still struggle with deciding to transfer. I know that I made the right decision transferring from my old university to Purdue, but at times I struggle to see the benefits. These are five amazing things I learned through transferring.
To trust my gut
I am exceptionally well known for being a push-over and not wanting to hurt people's feelings by giving them bad news. However, that wishy-washy part of my personality that likes to rear its head when I really need to talk to someone and tell them how I feel has become something I lean into less. I have learned that sometimes my gut feelings tend to be right, or at least more right than the overthought out feelings I have. I didn't trust my gut feeling while I was at my old school and almost stayed there for an additional semester, something which would have been even more of a disaster than my semester off was. Whenever I don't trust my gut while at Purdue, I try to remind myself of what happened last time I was all kinds of wishy-washy.
That my happiness matters more than avoiding feeling defeated
While trying to decide if I was going to transfer, I had to rely a lot on deciding if feeling bad about transferring was going to make me feel worse than staying there. I hated being at my old school and while most people who were important to me could tell, I always hesistated because I knew I was going to feel like a failure for having to take a semester off and be at home. To this day, if anyone is considering transferring schools, I encourage them to because there is no reason to stay in a toxic environment to avoid a little bit of embarassment. Since arriving at Purdue, I have gotten involved with things and wanted to get out almost as soon as I started. I knew that I would have been unhappy if I did not complete my task but also knew that as soon as it was over I needed to get out so that I could be my own kind of happy.
To never discount possibilities for trivial reasons
When deciding to transfer, I almost chose not to attend Purdue, convinced that because I didn't want to go there in high school it meant that I certainly wouldn't want to be there now. I am grateful to my parents for encouraging me to apply and go there, and for the one person who I was willing to drive five hours across two states to visit at Purdue. While my love for him had no influence on my actual decision to apply to Purdue, my love for him is the reason I visited Purdue in the first place. I had almost thrown away my chance to be happy just because that was the same school that my family had attended and I didn't want to be another Purdue engineer.
That my voice matters
One of the most annoying things about my old school is that the number of times I told them something had absolutely no effect. To this day, they refuse to accept that I no longer attend that university and send me messages about financial aid. To this day, they have my concentration wrong listing me as pre-PT like I applied as, instead of the pre-med I told them about fifteen times I wanted to be instead. They wouldn't listen when I said I wanted my friend at a meeting instead of being forced to go alone, and they certainly didn't listen when I said I needed to get out. Nothing is more frustrating than being discounted by the school you had picked because you were convinced you were going to be happiest there. At Purdue, I have adopted a policy that what I want matters too, and while sometimes I choose not to voice my opinion, when I do voice it I expect it to be heard by the people who need to hear it.
To be proud of myself
Transferring was one of the most difficult things I went through and I am still sometimes struggling with that decision. While deep down I know that I am right and I made the best decision, having to deal with that that decision was difficult and to this day, I want to go back or go home, or be anywhere else. I am proud of myself for dealing with being a new student again and for dealing with having to make friends with people in much larger classes. I am proud of myself for realizing what toxic is and for getting rid of all toxicity in my life to have a clean break at Purdue. While being proud of myself is rare, I learned that it's okay for me to be proud.
