Junior year of college is one of the most crucial years of your life. It's the time when you begin to finalize your idealistic future career, take classes that correlate specifically to your major as opposed to general-eds, and the year that you realize how close you are to serious adulthood. Going through the transferring process was nothing short of a shocking, scary, and exciting time for me. After two years of community college in sunny California, it was time for me to take on the Michigan winters and study along side some of the smartest people in the world. But let me tell you, it wasn’t at all what I expected. Here is what I learned:

1. Finding a solid group of friends is not as automatic as freshman year.

Now, this isn’t to say that transferring means you will not meet people. However, when you come into a school as big as Michigan, where most people met their friends freshman and sophomore year in the dorms, it wasn't as easy as expected to include myself in social activities. When I first got here, I didn’t know how I was going to meet people. I have two words for you: get involved. Go to Festifall (or whatever club fair your school offers) and join clubs, talk to the people sitting next to you in your classes, join Greek life if that’s what you’re into, work for your schools newspaper or even get a job on campus. Whatever you decide to do, make sure that you put yourself out there. It’s scary at first, but that’s what college is for.

2.Use your resources.

I hate to admit it, but I never used any of the resources given to me at my last college. The career center here is incredible and it is there for you to take advantage of. It doesn’t matter what year you are, never feel as though the alumni center wouldn’t be helpful to you (not to mention the free blue books there are definitely a plus). And, if you are anything like me and have fallen down the stairs two times because you’ve never had to deal with snow, use University Health Services!

3. Don’t be intimidated by the integrity.

Coming from a community college, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I didn’t know how rigorous the classes would be compared to my last school which was nicknamed “Harvard on a Hill.” When I first got to U of M, I was scared. I was scared that the classes would be too hard to handle and that I was not going to bring home the report card I wanted to. I was scared that the people around me were ten times smarter than I would ever be. A few weeks into the semester, I realized that was a fear that I needed to let go of. Where you come from, whether it was another four year or a community college, does not matter once you are here. What matters is what you take away from the class. Once I let go of that fear, I found myself succeeding even further and caring more about the content that I was learning than I was the grade I was getting compared to those around me.

4. Go to office hours.

When you are in big lecture halls, you are nothing to the professors but your student ID numbers. Now, that is not to say that said professors don’t care about you, it just means that you have to make yourself known to them. Go to their office hours. Go to your GSI’s office hours. Introduce yourself, ask questions and be proactive. It is a lesson that will come in handy post-graduation as well.

5. Don’t waste your time.

Over winter break, I decided to reflect on my time during my first semester and began to think about my future. I am 1 year and a semester away from leaving a place I can finally call my home, and I am devastated about it. Each and every person at this university is absolutely, without a doubt, lucky to be a Wolverine, and I finally understand why. To know that I have such a short period of time left here has left me with the passion to explore every little bit of this university, get even more involved, and expand my networks here. It is beyond compare one of the best places to be. Don’t waste your time because you will look back wishing you had done more. Whether or not you transferred here doesn’t matter when it comes to this.

Over the past few months, I have learned more about myself than I believe I ever could have anywhere else. I have gained responsibility, I have faced realities that I didn’t know I would need to face and I have met some of the most incredible people that I call myself lucky to know.